After a major incident, Valorant developer Riot Games has decided to make some serious changes to its hate speech policy.

Anna Donlon, head of Valorant, announced the new policy on Twitter and YouTube. According to her, the studio has not done enough to effectively remove the most disruptive players from Valorant and will be finalizing updates to the already implemented policy over the next thirty days. The punishments could be hardware-based in the most severe cases, so that it would not be possible to create new accounts on the platform from which the offending player was banned.

I have never made a more desperate plea that what I am about to say right now. @riotgames @RiotSupport I need you guys to fucking do something. I am an incredibly strong person and I have been streaming for a very, very long time. But absolutely nothing prepares you for someone… pic.twitter.com/Gr77uBsBrT

— TaylorMorgan (@TaylorMorganS_) May 13, 2024

All of this comes after a Twitch broadcaster, Taylor Morgan, posted a video this week of a Valorant player making sexual threats to her while playing the game. Morgan wrote on Twitter that she had never been so desperate, so desperate that she begged Riot to “f_cking” do something. She considers herself a strong person and has been broadcasting for a long time, but nothing prepared her for someone to say this to her. She feels that suspensions are not enough because there is nothing stopping these men from behaving like this until hardware bans happen. She says they should never be allowed to play Valorant again.

Maybe that’s what Donlon was responding to in his statement, because she said that sometimes it happens too often that someone has to experience the worst behavior (something painful, threatening) for everyone to understand where the gaps are in their systems and processes where this can happen. This is exactly what Riot Games is experiencing right now, but Donlon has been vocal that there is no place for anyone in Valorant or in the community to behave this way.

And that is a logical stance. If it’s a community of friends teasing each other, that’s fine (it can’t and shouldn’t be taken seriously), but with the opposite sex, there’s no way it fits and it shouldn’t happen. Banning hardware may be aggressive, but it can be seen as a practical solution.

Source: VGC