Riot Games reassures community regarding their stance against toxicity in Valorant

Riot Games have once again reassured the community regarding their zero-tolerance against toxic behaviour in Valorant, be it through voice or text chat. In a recent Dev Update video, Team Lead for Valorant Anna Donlon made some things clear.

Speaking to the community, Donlon said, “The responsibility of protecting our community of Valorant players is one I take very personally, and I can tell you that very often it can feel like we've, like I've, failed in that responsibility”.

She further revealed that these types of players are a fraction of what remains in the overall community, and while regular punishments worked fine on some, few others seem to be unaffected. To fix this, the devs are finalizing and updating their current policies regarding punishment for these activities.

Riot going all in with hardware bans

The new policy will introduce more severe punishments for offenders. Repeat offenders can get permanent bans and in extreme cases like Hate speech or sexual harassment, even hardware bans will be handed to individuals.

“We're introducing new actions. This will include penalties ranging from temporary bans to permanent bans, all the way up to and including hardware bans for our worst offenders. Hardware bans are an extreme form of punishment, so we will apply them only in the most extreme cases with clear evidence and manual review,” she said.

This comes two weeks after a streamer was harassed during a game of Valorant, which started an uproar on the internet, with many asking for strict action against the player. Donlon responded, saying the team would take necessary action and would work on fixing the issue.

As the number of gamers increases, the cases of online bullying and toxic behaviour in video games have been on the rise. One effective way to keep away from these kinds of people is to simply mute them, as most games provide the option to mute players individually.

Valorant, for the most part, has always aimed to keep the community open and safe for every player since the beginning. However, there will always be some bad apples in the mix that will try to ruin the experience for other players.