Riot (LoL, VALORANT) and Ubisoft team up to banish toxicity in chats


The two major video game publishers, Ubisoft (Assasin’s Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon…) and Riot Games (League of Legends, VALORANT, TFT) announce this Thursday a “cross-cutting research initiative to address disruptive behaviors” in in-game communication systems. In other words: like others before them, they want to end the toxicity in cats from online games.

This “Zero Harm in Comms” project must improve the artificial intelligence of the bots which already make it possible to fight against toxic behavior. The research therefore aims to train AI-based tools as well as possible, and to create a common database for the entire video game industry, with an ecosystem that collects the data. Overall, the more diverse data an artificial intelligence receives, the more it refines itself to stop any harmful behavior at the source, and to differentiate, for example, between jokes or threats in a chat. But could this desire to pool everything eventually allow harmful behavior in the LoL chat to lead to surveillance or a ban on other video games from other publishers? The question may arise…

Guarantee respect for privacy

“Disruptive behavior is a problem that we take very seriously, but which is also particularly difficult to solve. At Ubisoft, we are working on concrete measures to ensure safe and rewarding experiences, but we believe that by mobilizing different members of the industry, we can address this issue in an even more effective way,” ensures Yves Jacquier, Executive Director at the house of Ubisoft La Forge. “Through this technology partnership with Riot Games, we are exploring other approaches to better prevent in-game toxicity, as designers of these environments, with a direct link to our communities.”

Ubisoft and Riot specify all the same that the system must create a framework which will guarantee the respect of the private life of the players and an ethical use of this data.. However, Wesley Kerr, Head of Technical Research at Riot Games, does not hesitate to mention a system that can be extended to “any company that has an online social platform and is looking to settle this subject”.

The project is currently at beginning of his journey, and the two publishers will try to rally other partners. The first ones results of this research will be shared next year to the entire video game industry, “regardless of the result”. To learn more, visit this blog post.





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