Riot responds to female harassment claims in Valorant voice comms after a recent incident involving Sydeon

Female players in Valorant have often complained about severe harassment from toxic players over voice and text coms while playing the game. In most cases, it seems to relate to sexual abuse.

Cosplay content creator Sydney "Sydeon" recently exposed some of the concerning experiences she had while playing Valorant. Unfortunately, the sexism that Sydeon has faced is in line with what a lot of female Valorant players have shared over the past year.

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Sydeon exposed sexist abuse in Valorant matches:

Sydeon is one of the most popular Twitch streamers. On June 22nd, Sydeon was solo-queuing in Valorant. She explained that her teammates kept yelling at her to "get back in the kitchen." The incident left Sydeon shaking with frustration.

She later took this matter to Twitter to draw everyone's attention. Her Tweet read

Queued one solo q game. Got held hostage after they yelled at me telling me to get back in the kitchen and asking why I even q up to play games. I’m shaking I’ve never been so upset people either call me boosted for playing with friends or I get flamed cause of my f*****g gender

Queued one solo q game. Got held hostage after they yelled at me telling me to get back in the kitchen and asking why I even q up to play games. I’m shaking I’ve never been so upset people either call me boosted for playing with friends or I get flamed cause of my fucking gender

— Sydney🔮 (@Sydeon) June 22, 2021

Previously, many other popular female streamers, including Lily "LilyPichu" Ki, Imane "Pokimane" Anys, and Rachell "Valkyrae" Hofstetter, have faced similar issues in the past. Lilypichu also admitted that she never uses chat in solo queues to avoid such harassment.

Sydeon also tagged Valorant in her Tweet and requested the developers to listen to the comms of that particular match. She said,

"It makes the atmosphere unsafe to have people like this playing."

Anyways, @PlayVALORANT if you can listen to comms of me being called a "whore" and being told to go back to the kitchen that'd be rly cool. It makes the atmosphere unsafe to have people like this playing. Happy to provide more info if needed 👍 pic.twitter.com/RqmZWDvpt4

— Sydney🔮 (@Sydeon) June 22, 2021

However, Riot has quickly responded to the incident. Riot revenue lead for Valorant, Joe "SWAGGERNAU7" Lee, asked for the account name and other important details and assured Sydeon that they would look into this matter and take the necessary steps against the accused players.

However, these frequent incidents have raised questions within the Valornat community about player safety. It will be interesting to see how Riot deals with these situations so as to ensure that players can enjoy the game without harassment.