Riot reveals new plans for stopping Valorant toxicity by targeting ranked

Riot’s battle with toxic Valorant players is only continuing, but the developer might have the solution once and for all. They’re looking at banning players from playing ranked if they have chat restrictions, among other potential fixes.

In Valorant, having good comms can be the difference between winning and losing. It makes the game infinitely more difficult when you have teammates going at each other’s throats, hurling out abuse.

While there are restrictions ⁠— with bans for toxic behavior in text and voice chat ⁠— they aren’t enough. This is especially prevalent against women and girls, who often face a raft of sexist toxicity when they open their mic.

Riot Games

Toxicity is a big problem in Valorant, and Riot are pledging to fix it.

Chat-banned Valorant players won’t be able to play ranked

Now, Riot are starting to put new systems in place to stem the abuse. Senior Producer Ian ‘BrightEyez’ Fielding promised as much, stating the developers are actively working on new technology to crack down on these abusive players.

One such way they’ll do so is by banning toxic players from playing ranked if they have an active chat restriction. They expect this system to be up and running in the next “two to three patches.”

• Read More: Riot dev promises action to tackle sexist toxicity in Valorant

“We will be preventing players who have been penalized with chat and voice restrictions from playing ranked in the next two to three patches. We are actively working on the tech, it’s taking a little bit longer than anticipated, but we are committed to building it,” he said on Reddit.

“While we don’t want to make it a requirement that you have to use voice comms in rank…we do understand that having players who have already proven they can be highly disruptive with active restrictions in your rank games feels unfair, and we want to prevent that from happening.”

More Valorant toxicity measures coming in Episode 2

This is only the beginning of Riot’s latest crackdown on toxic Valorant players. Fielding added that the devs have plans “to reduce disruptive behavior and make our penalty systems more robust.”

This includes the recent introduction of an AFK penalty in Episode 2. However, more announcements will be dropped in the coming months about how they’ll further combat toxicity.