CW: Sexual harassment

Hey everyone! So my friend and I (both guys) always hear about sexism and sexual harassment in Valorant voice comms. We didn't doubt or downplay it, as we've heard plenty of it, but we wanted to see just how bad it was. So, my friend changed his username to a generic girl's name and never spoke in voice comms so he wouldn't give away his gender. Holy shit, this was the worst decision ever. It ruined my image of the game and I'm surprised Valorant has more than 10 women who play it. About every third game there was severe sexual harassment to the point where we were both extremely uncomfortable. Those who harassed my friend, even when other teammates would tell them to stop, wouldn't stop no matter what. But of course everybody knows that the Val player base has plenty of harassers/sexists/weirdos, but what Val devs haven't figured out is how to fix it.

The players don't have much of an ability to stop sexism and harassment because they don't have much power over other players. The chance of harassers stopping because someone on their team told them to is very low. In fact, people who harass women most likely want people to tell them to stop just so they can get attention. Moreover, sexual harassment is based off of the idea that a woman would not want to hear what you are saying about her, so you tell her against her will, which means that people telling the harassers to stop only makes them feel better about what they are doing. Of course I'm not saying you should ignore them and just let them do whatever they want to, but I am saying that you are in a lose-lose situation which makes solving this issue much more important, necessary, and urgent. The only two options the players currently have are to mute or to report, but I'll go through both solutions and tell you why they are inadequate and offer some potential ways forward.

The Val devs are (obviously) in control of how players are punished in the community and have the most power over the player base. They also have the responsibility to help those who are being harassed in game. This responsibility should be their primary concern, as harassment doesn't only affect the game, but also affects people outside of the game, leading to a negative real-life emotional response. This issue is not always as simple as muting voice comms. First, if someone is being extremely sexist there is no doubt I'm flashing them, throwing mollies at them, body blocking them, and if there are multiple sexists on the team I am classic buying and going for 360's for the whole game. This brings up a larger point: I don't want to play with people who are sexist, whether they can talk or not. They ruin the entirety of the game and I want to do everything I can do to make their experience as unenjoyable as possible. Remember, we are weighing between a completely imaginary and irrelevant number (game score) and out-of-game harm from in-game harassment. Moreover, the harassment sticks with you the whole game and frequently beyond the game. Muting only prevents future harassment, but doesn't solve past harassment nor does it actually punish the harassers.

Now let's go to reports. Reports are an intuitive way to prevent harassment, but they still fall short when it comes with dealing with harassment. First, a comms ban can always run out and allow the harasser to resume harassment after 24 hrs, 7 days, 30 days, etc. Secondly, reporting someone, even if they are harassing you, does not actually stop them, as reports are not immediately processed. And just like muting, reporting doesn't solve past harassment and is actually less effective than muting because harassment can continue between the period of the report being submitted and the report being processed.

Let's now take the policy of not being able to leave games. A lot of competitive games don't allow you leave games, so this isn't unheard of, but it definitely doesn't help the dev's responsibility of helping those being harassed in-game. For example, let's go back to the situation where my friend and I are throwing because there are sexists on the team. As far as in-game fairness, it would be best to have everybody playing the game regardless of what happens in voice comms because sexism in voice comms doesn't directly lead to a change in score. It would also be the most fair if everybody stayed on their teams and didn't quit the game. Think if a bottom frag left a game because they weren't having fun and an insanely good player took their spot (in the case of games like R6). Well, that wouldn't be fair to the other team. On the flip side, if a team has someone leave and doesn't replace them (in the case of Val), it's not fair to the leaver's team because they are now at a disadvantage. But in a situation where me and my friend are throwing, it is worse than having a 3 v 5 because at least in a 3 v 5 there aren't two people (me and my friend) intentionally hurting their own team. Either my friend and I alt+f4 or throw, both leading to the fairness of the game being ruined. This means dealing with harassment doesn't only negatively affect those being harassed, but also negatively affects the entire fairness structure of the game.

Extreme problems are often best dealt with by extreme solutions. A surefire 100% way to stop harassment is to get rid of both voice and text comms. I think it could be argued that Valorant is at a point where harassment is bad enough to get rid of comms entirely. Every single person I have ever talked to or watched has encountered harassment, sexist, racism, homophobia, etc. in Valorant. Imagine if there was a workplace where this happened. Well there would, assumedly, be an astronomical amount of people quitting and suing. Why do we hold different opinions on harassment when it's in Valorant versus it being in a workplace? Isn't harassment always equally as bad no matter what the context? When the devs make a decision to keep or get rid of comms, they need to do it based on their number one responsibility, which is making sure the players aren't harassed. Remember, real-life harm versus in-game harm is what we are weighing between. The only other way the devs could view the situation is weighing the net good that the comms produce. The issue is that quantifying net good is not just hard, but literally impossible. It's impossible to determine whether or not comms have produced more good than bad or vice versa. The band-aid fix to voice comms would be to use an application like Discord where someone can be permanently banned if they are being weird or you can only invite your friends. If you have a hard time finding friends, there are tons of communities on Twitch, Reddit, and on Discord itself where you can find people to play with if that's an issue you deal with.

As a less extreme solution, we could get rid of voice chat and only have text chat so everything people say could easily be tracked down. Under this system, you would be able to report individual messages so the report process is easier for Riot to handle. This is concrete evidence with no argument. Furthermore, maybe having Riot employees go into random matches and listen in to voice comms when there are reports would be useful.

We could also have blocks go into effect, meaning you won't queue with players you block. This is something very simple you could add to the game with little to no effect but positivity.

A really creative solution would be to have in-game voice changers that make you sound like the agent you are playing. Although it would sound odd, it's better than harassment.

I don't, at all, think this is unique to Valorant, so I don't want people to assume that only Valorant has these types of problems. No matter what community you are in, and whether that community is related to gaming or not, you will always encounter weirdos, sexists, harassers, racists, homophobes, etc. So don't take this post as just shitting on Riot because that's not my intent. As I've said, Riot has the most power to deal with these situations, but Riot has to remember that the players will be watching to make sure they make the correct decisions.

If solutions aren't rolled out, then we should stop buying skins in Valorant. The devs and players both make up the community, so if the devs don't roll out concrete and effective solutions, then you should punish the devs for being complicit with a larger sexist community. Ultimately, the devs made the medium through which the harassment happens, and they shouldn't be compensated for allowing harassment to continue.

Finally, let's make sure our priorities and viewpoints are in the correct places. You shouldn't deal with harassment at your school, university, or job, so why do we hold a different opinion when it comes to Valorant? Why do people tell other players to just have thick skin or say that harassment is some sort of inevitability? Imagine you were sexually harassed at your job and your boss tells you just have thicker skin. Why the fuck do we care more about running headshots than sexual harassment? Why are players expected to not let harassment get to them? If you don't let it bother you, good for you, but realize that you aren't everybody. People jump on the dicks of people who are able to get over/deal with the harassment or people who downplay how bad comms are with some feel-good story about a good interaction they had in comms today. Furthermore, I recognize that not everyone's experience is the same. People experience varying degrees of sexism and harassment in comms. If you are someone who does not experience as much harassment as someone else, don't discredit and downplay other experiences.

This is not at all a comprehensive list, but here are some particularly persuasive posts from this subreddit about harassment in comms:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/l1cax2/i\_am\_girl\_whos\_trying\_to\_fit\_in\_this\_game/

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/ix5mqp/last\_night\_i\_was\_repeatedly\_team\_killed/

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/juzc6w/we\_need\_the\_option\_to\_block\_players\_so\_we\_never/]

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/gary32/valorant\_executive\_producer\_wont\_solo\_queue/

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/jdr7vt/valorant_needs_an_option_for_reporting/

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/hoyltf/let\_me\_tell\_you\_some\_great\_stories\_of\_being\_a/

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/ge3ngx/sexism\_in\_game/

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/gzjfis/anyone\_else\_experience\_massive\_amounts\_of\_sexism/

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edit 1: formatting of links at end