If you play Valorant and are an unmitigated asshat to people over voice chat, believing you’re safe from being found out in player reports, then you’ll want to take heed to an update to the game’s privacy notice, which now allows the devs at Riot Games to “record and store, and reserve the right (but have no obligation) to monitor voice and text chat […] to help [Riot], among other things, address disruptive behavior, improve [its] services, enforce [its] rules and policies and Terms of Service, and foster a more positive gaming community for [its] players.”
The devs put together an announcement post and FAQ to explain the update to the terms, stating that the team would not be consistently listening in to voice chat, instead relying on the use of behavior systems for voice chat that are currently being developed. Beta testing of these systems is expected in North America first, with an announcement of how it will work before then.
The post further promised to only collect “the absolute minimum data” required in order to mitigate toxic and hostile behavior. “When we collect data, we’ll be transparent, we’ll keep it for only as long as is necessary, and we’ll protect it as if it were our own,” reads the post. “We know collecting voice data is a concern for many of you, but be assured that we would never ship anything if we weren’t comfortable having our own data treated the same way.”
As for those who don’t want their voice data gathered in this way, Valorant has a very simple solution for you: Turn off voice chat.
