Riot tightens the leash on toxic chat in Valorant
Valorant's Patch 12.09 brings a meaningful upgrade to how Riot Games polices in-game text chat. The studio has expanded its Riot Text Evaluation system to catch and penalise abusive text communications more accurately across a dozen languages, signalling a sharper stance on toxicity in the tactical shooter.
What's actually changing
The detection and penalty pipeline for text comms abuse has been improved across the following languages:
- English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese
- Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Polish
- Japanese and Chinese
In practical terms, abusive messages in team and all-chat should now be flagged more reliably, with penalties applied more consistently. Riot has not published exact thresholds or the punishment ladder in this update, so expect the existing system of warnings, chat restrictions, and account-level actions to continue, only with sharper teeth.
A note for Indian players
Hindi and other Indian languages are not named in this rollout. South Asian players who queue in English — which is the dominant comms language on Mumbai and Singapore servers — fall directly under the upgraded English detection. Riot has not confirmed any India-specific behaviour metrics or timelines tied to this change.
Rollout and platforms
The behaviour changes ship as part of Patch 12.09 on PC, alongside the patch's gameplay tuning that includes Neon adjustments and shotgun nerfs. The update is live globally following standard Valorant patch deployment.
What to do right now
- Clean up your chat habits — borderline banter in supported languages is more likely to be picked up.
- Use the in-game report tool for text abuse; it feeds directly into the same evaluation system.
- If you're hit with a chat restriction, treat it as a warning shot before harsher account penalties land.
