Valorant doubles down on eliminating toxicity with hardware bans

Riot Games, in a firm stance against toxicity, has announced robust measures to combat such behavior in Valorant that will include hardware bans for the worst offenders.

Valorant has attempted to deal with toxic behavior in players since it launched, and has continued to make strides to ensure players are punished properly.

However after a streamer’s clip of her being harassed and threatened in a Valorant game went viral, Riot’s hand has been forced to take more action. Valorant Studio Head Anna Donlon initially responded to the conflict herself, and said the behavior had not gone unnoticed and that changes were coming.

On May 30, 2024, Valorant posted a video to YouTube and X featuring Donlon as she explained what new changes would be coming.

“Over the next 30 days, we will be finalizing updates to our existing policies,” explained Donolon. “This will allow us to issue more severe penalties faster with a focus on the most severe behavior. Things like hate speech, severe sexual content, and any threats of violence which have no place in our game.”

According to Donlon, these systems will be adjusted as needed in the future. In addition to these policy updates, Valorant will introduce a hardware ban for severely harmful player behavior.

To combat a potential influx of reports from players, Valorant will add to its support team to better assist in the manual review system, which will be used before bans are handed out to players.

The final update Donlon provided is that it will expand the rollout of Riot Voice Evaluation, a system meant to catch audio of toxic behavior and punish accordingly. Although it’s only launched in English in the Americas so far, in the future other countries and languages will receive trials of this system.