Usually in video games, players have the option to only report other toxic players based on the categories provided by the developer of the game. Epic Games, however, has gone a step further and developed a mechanism which would allow reporting of voice clips in Fortnite breaking community guidelines.

Players will now be able to report a portion of the contentious audio anonymously, which will be sent to a moderator for review. Players over the age of 18 will have the option to customize their preferences for being recorded.

However, players under the age of 18 will have it turned on by default, and in case they do not want their voice to be recorded, the only way to avoid it is to completely turn off voice chat.

With the feature on, the last five minutes of the voice chat will be clipped on a “rolling basis” and stored on the device from where it was reported. Clips submitted will delete after 14 days, or the duration of a sanction if punished.

Other large gaming firms like Microsoft, Riot Games, and Sony have also introduced similar features in the past in an attempt to crack down on inappropriate behaviour in online multiplayer games.

Apart from that, Epic Games has also put in age restrictions for all first and third-party playable content inside Fortnite, like cosmetics.

What can someone do to avoid toxic players?

While voice chat reporting is a great feature to make players behave appropriately, there are often times when it can become annoying for the gamer as report reviews take time. For these situations, players should also mute the culprit in order to prevent them from provoking him/her to behave inappropriately, as the ban hammer can strike both ways.

In most of the games, teammates cannot usually grief each other, so muting them will often have more of a benefit on your gameplay. For games where players can harm their teammates, there is usually a limit on how much they can do before getting banned.