Valorant Executive Producer calls for help fighting abusive players

During the closed beta, complaints started to emerge of toxic and disruptive behaviour by individuals using voice or text chat. The issue is especially common for female gamers, many of whom say they can’t solo queue without being harassed.

In a title like Valorant, communication is everything. Therefore, the experience is significantly lessened if you feel uncomfortable talking to your teammates. Some people will just brush this off and say “It’s the same in every game” but Riot are taking a stand.

Valorant’s Executive Producer, Anna Donlon, has spoken passionately on this topic in the past. As a female gamer herself, she has had to deal with these situations first-hand.

In a recent Dev Diaries post, Donlon provided an update on how harassment is being handled in Valorant and what we can do to help.

“I made a huge commitment here at launch and I mean it. I funded an entire team of humans to focus on nothing else and you’ll see their work rolling out over the coming months” she explained.

Donlon urged the Valorant community to use the in-game reporting tools to help identify offending players. The systems need as much data as possible to get stronger, so don’t ignore disruptive behaviour just to save a couple of clicks.

Riot are “actively restricting and banning players based on these reports” and are working on a way to let you know when action is taken against someone that you reported.

Valorant has a long and exciting future ahead and it is up to us to build a healthy environment for all players. The developers are clearly serious about doing everything they can to fight against harassment and we should all play our part too.