VALORANT Voice Comms Abuse: What Riot Now Penalizes
Riot published Playing with Respect on September 22, 2026, the same day Patch 13.06 extended the Riot Voice Evaluation system to Spanish, Portuguese and Korean. Here is what gets you penalized in voice, and how to report it.
VALORANT voice comms abuse just got a lot harder to get away with in three more languages. Riot published Playing with Respect on September 22, 2026, the same day Patch 13.06 went live, and the headline is blunt: the Riot Voice Evaluation system (RVE) now listens for Spanish, Portuguese and Korean, with more languages coming in the months ahead. This is not a patch recap. It is what gets you penalized in voice now, how to report it, and why it matters when you are grinding a ranked ladder.
🎯 The short version
- Patch 13.06 updated RVE to better identify and penalize toxic voice comms in Spanish, Portuguese and Korean. More languages are on the way.
- Riot says the RVE improvements helped it detect and penalize 2x as many instances of voice comms abuse over the last year.
- The report category you want is Voice Comms Abuse, filed in-game after the match.
- Trash talk is still allowed. The rule of thumb: keep it about the game, not the person.
- Self-defense is not an exemption. Fire back with abuse and you can be penalized too.
- Player reports are what make the system work. Detection is only half of it.
🔍 What Patch 13.06 changed for voice comms
Riot Voice Evaluation is the in-game detection layer that reviews voice chat. It has been evolving for a while, and the September 22 announcement confirms what that investment bought: 2x more instances of voice comms abuse detected and penalized over the past year.
Patch 13.06 is the language expansion. Until now, a player ranting in Spanish, Portuguese or Korean had a real chance of slipping past detection. That gap closes with this update, and Riot says more languages follow. If you play in a LATAM or Brazilian lobby, this is the part of the patch that touches your games most.
Art: Riot Games
What Riot is not promising: a clean game. The announcement is explicit that disruptive behavior cannot be eliminated overnight, and RVE is not built to erase all trash talk.
🚨 Where the line sits: trash talk vs abuse
Competitive games run on banter, and Riot says that out loud. RVE is not tuned to delete every spicy voice line. The rule of thumb from the announcement is short enough to remember mid-match: keep it about the game, not the person.
On the fine side of the line:
- Questioning a play, calling out a whiff, or joking with the other team.
- Banter that stays on the match and stops when the round ends.
- Calling utility, tracking ult economy, planning a retake: the comms that win rounds.
On the wrong side:
- Repeated personal attacks, threats, hate speech and slurs.
- Anything that targets who someone is rather than how they play.
- Spam and noise that drown out the calls your team needs.
Two signals tell you it is time to dial it back: players start raising objections or go quiet, or you keep collecting reports for how you communicate. Read the room.
📣 How to report voice comms abuse in VALORANT
Reporting takes about ten seconds, and it is the only way Riot sees what detection misses. After the match, open the player list in the post-match menu, hit REPORT on the player, and pick from the categories Riot groups under the Community Pact: Play to Win, Play Fair and Play with Respect.
- Voice Comms Abuse is the voice category. It sits under Play with Respect, next to Text Comms Abuse and Offensive Name.
- You can select up to 3 offenses in a single report, so add the second category if two things happened in the same game.
- The text box is optional and caps at 512 characters. A short, specific note beats a paragraph of rage.
- You can mute the reported player's text chat from the same panel.
That report is what puts a case in front of a human: Riot is clear that detection is only one part of the system.
🛡️ "But they started it" is not a free pass
This is the part players get wrong. Riot's position: you are allowed to stand up for yourself, but self-defense does not give you a free pass to respond with abuse of your own. The policies apply to everyone in the lobby.
In practice, the player who started the argument can still be penalized, and so can you if your reply crosses the line. Continuing the fight is a choice, and it is the one that turns a bad teammate into two penalized accounts. Report, mute, get back to the round.
🏆 Why voice comms abuse matters on a cash ladder
On a ladder with entry fees and prize pools, comms are not a vibe thing. They are an edge. A team that calls utility, tracks economy and plans retakes wins rounds that a tilted team gives away. When one player spends the map arguing instead of calling, everyone's win rate pays for it.
Enforcement escalates too. Penalties scale with severity and history, comms mutes can come first, and there is no three-strikes rule that guarantees a second chance. Riot spelled out that ladder of penalties when it published the Community Pact, and the same framework sits behind the rest of Patch 13.06.
If you are climbing the Valorant ladder on Amber.gg, that is the environment you are queueing into, and the reports you file in-game are what keep it that way.
🧭 Your comms checklist before the next queue
- Call the game, not the player. Locations, utility, timings.
- Mute early instead of arguing late. One click, zero tilt.
- Report with the right category: Voice Comms Abuse, under Play with Respect.
- Add the specifics in the text box when you have them. Short and factual.
- Log off if you are the one boiling. Nobody climbs on tilt.
For the rest of what landed that week, our recaps of Patch 13.05 and its stream sniping bans cover the same push on competitive integrity across Valorant's ranked queues.
Comms are half of a competitive match, so bring the good half: report the abuse and queue the Valorant ladder on Amber.gg, or browse every ladder and tournament if you want to pick your game first.
