CSGO devs announce new plan to punish players abusing voice comms

Players who clog up in-game voice communications in CS:GO will now be punished under a new initiative by Valve, as the developers look to improve the experience of the 20-year old franchise for all.

In games Counter-Strike, communicating with teammates, especially in competitive matches, is a big key to success. However, some players go out of their way to abuse the voice system, which can make the game unenjoyable.

While players have been able to mute, report, and move on, Valve are taking actions to make sure chronic abusers of the system will receive proper punishment for clogging up comms and devaluing the valuable CSGO tool.

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In a February 6 blog post, Valve mentioned that they are going to start tackling voice communication abusers more proactively, instead of players having to do all the work themselves.

“We’ve been working on a new system that will work more precisely [at targeting abusers],” they said. “When the new system is fully deployed, players will receive a warning if they receive significantly more abuse reports than other players.

“If they ignore that feedback and continue to receive abuse reports, they’ll receive a penalty: they’ll be muted by all other players by default.

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“This ‘default mute’ state will remain until the player earns enough XP to remove the penalty, but other players can choose to manually unmute the user.”

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Instead of Valve policing the issue with their own guidelines, they want the community to “establish their own standards for communication and ensure that their fellow players receive anonymous feedback when they’re out of line.”

While the system still relies on user reports as a whole, there will now be a chain where abusers of the in-game voice function will be more harshly punished.

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Valve haven’t announced any further penalties on the way for users who get muted multiple times, although there’s a chance that a more harsh permanent mute could be added for repeat offenders.

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The new feedback system is currently live, with Valve urging players to “get into the habit” of reporting players in-game instead of just letting them get away with it.

So, in the future, you won’t have to even hear all those music bots and mic screamers in-game before they’re dealt with in your games, making for a more peaceful and enjoyable experience.