Riot Games wants to record voice chats

Riot Games has announced that it will record and analyze the free voice chat offered in its games in the future. Initially, only North American servers where communication takes place in English will be affected.

Eradicating toxic content

Riot Games states in its announcement that it wants to banish toxic content from its platform by recording all communication among game players. The reasoning thus follows that of other surveillance regimes: security trumps freedom. What exactly is meant by toxic content, how verbal communication is to be evaluated, and what consequences this will have for gamers, however, is as yet completely unclear. However, it is already clear that there will be no way to prevent the recording of voice chats: An opt-out is not planned.

According to the announcement, the recording will not only take place in the most popular games Valorant and League of Legends, but also in other games of the provider. This is likely to include the last games added in 2019.

What will the reaction be?

It remains to be seen how gamers will react to the innovation. In addition to the integrated voice chat, there are numerous external options available, which sometimes guarantee more privacy. It is therefore quite possible that the voice chat will be boycotted by Riot Games as a result of the recording and replaced by an alternative. Besides that, there is also the option to completely do without voice chat. Recorded will be North American voice chats from July 13. Violations will then be penalized later in the current year.

Furthermore, it will be interesting to observe the long-term development of Riot Games‘s offerings against the backdrop of the monitoring efforts. The company has gained enormous popularity, especially with League of Legends, and there are now even gaming monitors with League of Legends designs available.

However, Riot Games is not alone with this approach. Sony also records voice chats of its users, albeit only in excerpts. Riot Games emphasized that it does not want to listen permanently, but only to listen in on recordings and evaluate them in case of complaints – but the basic possibility of comprehensive monitoring including analysis of voice and communication patterns is given. At the same time, Riot Games is going a step further than Sony, for example, with the scope of the recording, which could be interpreted as a push towards more surveillance in the gaming sector. First comments were accordingly negative.

Not feasible in the EU?

It also remains to be seen whether Riot Games will also introduce the recording of all communications without the possibility of objection in the EU. In all likelihood, such an approach would not be compatible with the GDPR. It is therefore quite possible that gamers from the EU will be spared the complete monitoring of their voice chat. However, it is possible that Riot Games will not grant access to the voice chat if consent is not given, so that the only option would be to turn to external solutions.