Whether you’re playing a competitive game like League of Legends, or a horror game, Phasmophobia, communicating with your teammates can enhance your overall gaming experience.
Even if you prefer handling everything by yourself, there will be moments in Phasmophobia when you’ll need help from teammates. Though you should be able to talk to them through the game’s voice chat in most cases, there have been instances where Phasmophobia’s chat feature wouldn’t work for players.
You may think this error might have something to do with your microphone not working properly, but you may find out the game’s voice recognition feature may continue to work while you still can’t talk to your teammates. This makes the error more frustrating and challenging to fix.
Ultimately, it looks like an error that Kinetic Games will need to fix, but until the permanent fix rolls out, you can try the following troubleshooting methods to start talking with your teammates in Phasmophobia again.
Verify the integrity of your game files
A corrupted file voice chat file can cause the feature to act up. Verifying the integrity of Phamophobia’s files is a quick way of making sure that all of your in-game files are in top shape.
- Right-click on Phasmophobia.
- Choose Properties.
- Click on Local Files from the left column.
- Select Verify Integrity of Game Files.
Upon completing the process above, Steam will start scanning the game files for Phasmophobia and replace any corrupted ones. If you’re playing the same group of players, ask them to complete this process as well.
Check the in-game audio settings
If you have multiple audio devices connected to your PC, Phasmophobia may have gotten confused and ended up with the wrong recording device selected in the settings.
- Exit from Phasmophobia.
- Disconnect and reconnect your main recording device.
- Launch Phasmophobia.
- Ensure your main recording device is selected in the settings.
Download Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015
Downloading Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 was suggested by Dknighter, a Phasmophobia developer, on the Steam Community forums.
Dknighter confirms the voice chat issue was known, and it had something to do with the new voice chat system implemented in July 2021.
- Navigate to Microsoft’s official website to download Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015.
- Click on the red Download button.
- Once it finishes downloading, installing on your PC.
- Restart your PC after the installation and before trying to launch Phasmophobia.
Return to the game by clicking on the taskbar icon after tabbing out
Alt-tabbing out of Phasmophobia disrupts the voice chat system. If the voice chat stops working after you were switching around tabs, ensure you return to the game by clicking on its icon on the taskbar.
Alternatively, you can also relaunch the game, but it may not always be convenient since you won’t want to do it if you’re in the middle of a session.
Use Discord
If nothing in this list works for you and you can’t seem to hear your friends in Phasmophobia, you’ll need to resort to using alternative communication methods.
Using Discord, or similar voice chat programs like Mumble, TeamSpeak, and Skype will allow you to pick up your gaming session. You can always check the in-game voice chat later to see if it starts working again.
