Valorant hardware bans become a reality to combat toxicity in game

Riot Games has released a strong statement toward combating toxicity by promising Valorant hardware bans. Delivering the statement, Riot's Studio Head Anna Donlon personally addressed the Valorant community in a new clip where she revealed multiple steps that the organization is taking to ensure the game remains a safe playing environment.

The Valorant hardware bans, according to Donlon, will be the harshest form of punishment any player would face. Here's more about the penalties.

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Riot Games to introduce Valorant hardware bans to punish toxicity

In her statement, Anna Donlon explained there is no place for extremely harmful behavior in Valorant. This has led to the introduction of Valorant hardware bans which would work similarly to the current anti-cheat:

"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, similar to how it works with anti-cheat right now."

She also mentioned some changes that will be made to the existing policies. These will be finalized within the next 30 days to deal with hate speech, threats, and more:

"First, over the next thirty days we'll be finalizing updates to our existing policies. This will allow us to issue more severe penalties and faster with focus on the most severe behaviors. Things like hate speech, severe se*ual content, and threats of violence which have no room in our game. And we will continue to adjust those categories when and where it's needed."

The Valorant hardware ban is just another part of a larger group of changes and improvements that Riot Games will be making to ensure a safer playing experience. Donlon also promised that they would be doubling up their efforts to manually review player reports.

Finally, she informed the Valorant community about Riot Voice Evaluation systems that are currently being beta-tested by Valorant devs in North America, which help penalize players for toxic speech patterns. She asserted that they are looking to roll the systems out in more regions in the future.