While Riot Games has previously pledged to deal with the issue of sexual harassment in its recently released Valorant, it appears that some members of the Valorant community still have considerable concerns with the issue. A thread on the r/VALORANT subreddit asked for Riot Games to treat sexual harassment as seriously as cheating.
"If you get caught cheating once you get hardware ID banned," said original poster 'GreatLoL', "but for you to get any punishment for sexual harassment you need to have dozens of people report you." They then demanded for Riot to record voice comms as a way of having evidence beyond multiple reports and for those guilty of sexual harassment to be hardware ID banned like cheaters, stating: "I want to see them save and review recordings of voice coms [sic] if they are flagged for com abuse... [Harassers] should get hardware ID banned."
While this is a serious issue that nobody in the community should ever experience, commenters pointed out how muting harassers is an available option. In the top comment, user 'redundantdeletion' pointed out the legal impracticality of saving voice comms, highlighting that doing so could "violate data protection laws in the EU."
There have been many public displays of sexual harassment and sexist behavior in Valorant. UX Designer for Teamfight Tactics Riot Greenily shared a video earlier this year of being harassed during a Valorant match which received many comments from other Riot Games employees sharing similar experiences. Executive producer Anna 'SuperCakes' Donlon later stated that Riot Games was taking this issue seriously and pledged that the Los Angeles-based developer will do better by the community.
A main point to why this issue is hard to tackle is how cheating is much easier to prove compared to harassment. The usage of a third-party program is easily identifiable but determining what is and isn't sexual harassment is going to require more human evaluation. While Valorant's anti-cheat system has proved controversial, it has been highly effective at identifying offenders as seen with the thousands of bans that have occurred.
Ultimately, the issue of sexual harassment is something linked more with internet anonymity and culture rather than something specific to Valorant itself. While it would be great if Riot Games can purge its recently-released first-person shooter of harassers, doing so may prove highly impractical due to the legal barriers. Nobody should ever experience harassment, but the solution is likely further off than the community hopes.
Valorant is available now on PC.
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Source: Reddit