Popular Game Valorant Will Start Listening To Your Voice Chat Next Month (pcgamer.com) 28
Riot Games will begin background evaluation of recorded in-game voice communications on July 13th in North America, in English. In a brief statement(opens in new tab) Riot said that the purpose of the recording is ultimately to "collect clear evidence that could verify any violations of behavioral policies." From a report: For now, however, recordings will be used to develop the evaluation system that may eventually be implemented. That means training some kind of language model using the recordings, says Riot, to "get the tech in a good enough place for a beta launch later this year." Riot also makes clear that voice evaluation from this test will not be used for reports.
If it works, I don't even mind (Score:2, Troll)
Re:If it works, I don't even mind (Score:5, Interesting)
And besides, it's pride month and so its fitting to celebrate it with some anal probing!
On a more serious note, Riot is well known for installing always on root kit on machines for what it claims to be "anti cheat purposes". Yes it runs even when you're not gaming, scanning everything you do and sending it back home. And yes, Riot is owned by Tencent, so it's sending it all to China.
So if you're playing those games still, you're already getting anally probed to a pretty significant extent. This is less about "oh god they're spying on me" and more of a "they're spying on me a little bit more than they spied on me before". At least they're not always watching you through potential cameras on your device. As far as we know. Chinese rootkits are not exactly open source and properly audited.
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Whatever AI listens to it will probably end up deleting itself.
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AI isn't a deranged far leftist who has a meltdown every time they hear gamer words being used.
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I mean, I'm glad they tell us about it, but I will simply never use something that permanently records my voice. Not worth a game, and if I'm playing with friends then I can just use 3rd party voice.
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There are software "voice changers/obscurers" - when talking with strangers on the internet in a group chat. Any one of those people could be recording at any time, even if the service doesn't.. you never know really, especially if they're just random people you never met before.
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Sure, they could. And if I knew they were recording I would immediately close the call. When someone tries to take my picture in public do you think I just shrug my shoulders and say "Well, there are probably other creeps trying to take my picture without me knowing it." ? Of course not.
Anyhow, I don't have too many reasons to suspect people I don't know to record me though, since I am also unknown to them. Comparatively, Riot already has a large amount of information about every player, and actually has th
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You can always mute all voices
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but I play some other Riot games
LOL. No I'm not laughing at you, we know the only other remotely popular game from Riot Games is LOL ;-)
Privacy violations in 3...2... (Score:2)
This will end badly for Valorant users. And, Riot will sell the software, made off the backs of their base, and make a bundle
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They're long past that. Riot is well known from it's post Tencent acquisition period to install an always on spyware rootkit on machines that run its games for anti-cheat monitoring purposes.
Which by their own admission monitors everything you do on your machine even when you're not running the game and calls home to report it. Compared to that, this is just extending the fist in the ass a bit further than where it already is.
(If you didn't get the reference, look up Riot Games corporate logo).
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This has nothing to do with Tencent. Why do people always want to connect Tencent to the use of stupid antihack software that's literally used all over the world.
Re: Privacy violations in 3...2... (Score:2)
Also, let's note the latest version of easy anti cheat does NOT ask for permission before auto installing into the kernel. I tested this and found it sends user data home before even the eula screen in games. They're not worried about priva
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They're not worried about privacy lawsuits here, and that should scare all of us.
That's because most gamers are the type to scream "DO SOMETHING!" without caring whether or not that "something" has any chance in hell of actually doing what they want. All they care about is the appearance of cheaters being dealt with. Some of them think that publishers collecting the national IDs of players (yes, including kids) would help end cheating. They don't care about privacy one bit. Which should show everyone just how ineffective the industry's anti-cheat solutions really are.
For those that d
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Whaaaat. I wasn't aware that Riot is owned by the Chinese!
And here's all the games Riot makes (Score:2)
Here's a list of all the games Riot makes for anyone who cares about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] .
I completely appreciate the fact that they're trying to take on the subset of toxic gamers out there but I would prefer to not be spied on.
Nope (Score:3)
Blocking and reporting should be fine for most people. Is it within their right to do this? Sure. Is it creepy a fuck? Yep!
There are plenty of games that don't spy on me. I'll play those.
Voice chat gets disabled immediately after install (Score:1)
I don't have a mic physically attached to my machine, nor would I ever consider enabling voice chat in a game.
Source: Have played multiplayer games on the Internet publicly with other people; those people display highly irritating behavior.
Then what ... (Score:1)
They deal with the toxic players, reduce their impact on the gaming experience, what happens after that?
They have your voice, your comments, why not monetise that and hand those recordings over to the marketing department - you've said great things about ${GAME} why not use those as endorsements in the next round of advertising.
The T&Cs may be written to respect privacy, but as has been seen over the years T&Cs can be rewritten to include measures that collect data on your gaming habits and use that
But I said 'pirate ship', not 'pile of shit' (Score:2)
how can I get my ban for life lifted?
it's really bad on Valorant (Score:2)
This is going to go a long ways to clear that out.
I hope people give it a chance.
heres an idea (Score:1)
Heres an idea, if your cheating use discord.