Xbox Launches New Voice Reporting Feature

I have had some fantastic memories of playing games late into the night with some mates over voice comms. Often, it’s not the actual game you are playing together that makes it a fun night, but the banter back and forth between everyone. On the flip side of the coin, there have been countless times in games that have open mic lobbies or the early online games that just had voice chat on or voice chat off and nothing in between. The verbal diarrhea, racial slurs, toxicity and just indecent human behaviour that I have heard from some online gamers is just awful. Then there are those that just crank music at a distorted volume just to block others from legitimate voice chat. Well last week, Xbox announced they are releasing platform-wide, reactive voice reporting feature to Xbox Insiders, allowing players to capture and report inappropriate in-game voice chats, which sounds like a very good thing to trial.

With two daughters under the age of six, as well as my nieces and nephews who are just starting to get into gaming, voice chat is one of the first things I turn off for them on the Xbox, PC or Switch. Whether it’s my daughters who are watching me play something non-violent but still has multiplayer voice, or my nephew who is just getting into Fortnite, voice chat is one of the bigger red flags I inform my family and friends about. You can age-gate some things like Roblox and I can jump into lobby with my nephew in Fortnite, but voice chat could undo all of the safeguards we put in place if someone really wanted to invade the space.

As the next step in Xbox’s safety innovation, voice reporting – specifically for in-game chat – was targeted as this is an area where players have the highest opportunity to interact with players outside their friend network. Xbox’s player reporting now covers all content including text, image, video and voice. The feature, part of Xbox’s larger moderation suite, equips Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One players with the ability to capture a 60-second video clip of an in-game voice incident that they believe violates the Community Standards. They can then submit it as evidence to the Xbox Safety Team for review, who will evaluate the user report and determine if a policy violation took place.

To follow on from this, Xbox have also made updates to the notification features so the player that submitted the report will get a notification about whether or not Xbox took action on the report submitted. The reactive voice reporting feature on Xbox will be available to console players in select English-language markets (US, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand) via the Xbox Insider Program – and players are encouraged to share all their feedback to help Xbox improve this feature. Xbox are actively working toward supporting additional languages as we continue our investment in voice moderation.

I am so glad that these kinds of safeguards are being researched, tested and implemented in this time. It means that by the time my daughters become of age to play appropriate games, I can be confident that they will be playing in a safe and welcoming environment. There are still many things I need to do as a parent to ensure the play environment is safe, such as age limits on content, understanding the content within games they ask to play because their friends said they were playing it at school, and to ensure they aren’t exposed to any predatory situations online. The future is always getting brighter and safer with Xbox.

#roundtablecoop