Some would say that toxic voice chat is a staple of Call of Duty. But even if they’re right, the people who are so quick to turn on their mics and spew hate should be careful the next time they do so while playing against players on Xbox.
Xbox officially announced and semi-launched a new voice reporting capture-and-submit tool today, which lets players automatically clip and save up to 60 seconds worth of inappropriate voice chat messages and then instantly submit it as evidence to the Xbox Safety Team. “Reactive voice reporting” isn’t just a feature for Call of Duty, either. It should “work across thousands of games that offer in-game multiplayer voice chat, including Xbox 360 backward-compatible titles,” according to Xbox.
The new voice record-and-submit feature will first be released this week to Alpha and Alpha-skip Xbox Insiders in select English-language markets like the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. The feature will even include an option that lets you “capture now, report later” so you don’t have to stop playing to submit the report. Only the players who captured the clip will have access to it and the Xbox Safety Team will only have access to it if it is submitted. Unsubmitted clips will be deleted from the console after 24 hours.
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Additionally, like reporting features that come in various multiplayer titles, players who submit reports will get a notification informing them whether or not the Xbox team took action.
While Call of Duty is not the only game to feature open multiplayer comms, it does have the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most common games where voice chat abuse exists. Between open lobby chat and the brief post-death voice chat window, players more commonly hear voice chat abuse rather than congratulations or friendly conversation.
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Will this new feature turn the tide? Even when it’s fully launched and used on all Xbox consoles, probably not completely. But some progress is better than none. Though if you enjoy receiving those angry messages because you just destroyed the other team in a one-vs-three and making them suffer brings you joy, feel free to keep enjoying them—just be mindful of what you say back.
Published: Jul 12, 2023 03:32 pm