Now it’s easy to report the trolls
Voice reporting is a new moderation tool that Epic Games unveiled on Thursday. It enables players to submit audio evidence when reporting suspected breaches of the game’s community standards. Voice reporting, according to Epic, will allow the company to use voice chat to take measures against gamers who bully, abuse, discriminate, or indulge in other unacceptable behavior.
In other words, Epic is giving you another way to report foul language if you chance to come across it in Fortnite’s voice chat feature. Fortnite is combating harassment by releasing a new feature that lets users record in-game audio and send it to Epic Games admins.
The last five minutes of audio are rolled back when voice reporting is enabled. Players can post and submit any videos that show bullying, harassment, discrimination, or other improper behavior. Chats are erased every five minutes if they are not.
With Fortnite’s new reporting tool, voice chats in-game will be recorded and stored on the computers of the players not on Epic’s servers, according to the business. After that, users may report inappropriate activity to Epic by sending recorded voice conversations to the company’s moderators for assessment. For what seems to be the great majority of situations, voice reporting is essentially always on. In reality, voice chat is always enabled in games where players under the age of 18 are present.
Steps to set up a voice chat recording
Go into the main settings of Fortnite, pick Audio > Voice Reporting, then choose Always On or Off When Possible to activate the option. No matter what they do, players under the age of 18 always have this function activated. They can completely disable audio chat in settings or mute it if they don’t want to be recorded. Always On should go without saying. When using the other setting, it only doesn’t record if you’re at a friend’s party and everyone has chosen to turn off their phones when possible. Epic team said:
“Voice reporting will be on if Party Channels include one or more players with voice reporting set to ‘Always On’ or a player [is] added through Looking for Party.”
Additionally, Epic guarantees the anonymity of voice reports, so users who have been flagged for breaking community guidelines won’t know who made the report. Although Epic claims it is working on a feature for 2024, players who have submitted reports will not be notified of any actions done by the moderation staff.
Not to worry about the audio leaks
Don’t get scared about privacy or audio leaks. The recordings are made in real-time on the player’s device not on the cloud. They are completely inaccessible to Epic Games unless they are uploaded along with a report. After 14 days or the period of punishment, whichever comes first, clips are removed. Additionally, appeals will save the audio clip so moderators may listen to it. In the event that it comes to that, Epic says it will keep audio “for as long as legally required.”
