New Ubisoft & Riot Games Partnership Aims To Crackdown On “Harmful Content In Game Chats”

When exploring the different opportunities to better the industry, large-scale collaborations or even acquisitions is how many firms aim to tackle this effort. So far, the most talked about ambition comes from Microsoft with the recent Activision Blizzard deal for $70 billion as it aims to improve the work life and expects to influence the greater industry. Already, a spokesperson spoke in favor of unionization for its upcoming purchase.

Additionally, other groups are bounding together to tackle other aspects in the industry. According to a new blog post from Ubisoft, the new ‘Zero Harm in Comms’ initiative is yet another effort to bring more to the table for all players. By teaming up with Riot Games, both firms can explore ways for less harm to player safety.

“We cannot solve it alone. We want to build the framework for this, share the results with the community, see how it goes, and bring in more people,” says Ubisoft’s La Forge R&D Department Executive Director Yves Jacquier. “We agreed that the solutions that we can use today are not sufficient for the kind of player safety we have in mind for our players.”

“We really recognized that this is a bigger problem than one company can solve. And so how do we come together and start getting a good handhold on the problem we’re trying to solve? How can we go after those problems, and then further push the entire industry forward?” Wesley Kerr, Riot Games Head of Tech Research adds.

When exploring opportunity for how Ubisoft & Riot Games can clamp down on wrongful speech in-game, it turn to AI machines to detect when conversations or responses is aimed in a derogatory or malicious way. “There are key words that can be immediately recognized as bad. However, it’s often much trickier to parse.

“For example, if you see ‘I’m going take you out’ in a chat, what does that mean? Is it part of the fantasy? If you’re playing a competitive shooter, it might not be a problem, but if it’s another type of game, the context might be totally different.” Kerr goes on to inject, “We want players to know we are taking action on this.

“That visibility and that communication with the player is going to be critical for them to understand that this is happening in the background. They may not care how it’s happening; they just want to know that things are improving, and things are getting better.” The initiative has been active for six months already and more on the matter is said to be unveiled next year.

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Source: Ubisoft