Microsoft has released its newest platform-wide Reactive Voice Reporting feature to its Alpha and Alpha-skip Xbox Insiders this week. This new Xbox feature will give Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One players the option to capture and report inappropriate in-game voice chats by capturing and reporting 60-second video clip of an in-game voice incident that violates Microsoft’s community standards for review.
Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute gave a statement expressing the positive impact this new feature will bring to the Xbox community.
“With reactive voice reporting, Xbox continues to help players feel protected,” said Balkam. “Empowering players with easy-to-use tools helps foster togetherness while improving the greater health of the gaming community on Xbox. With measures like this in place, players can feel confident they are in a safe, welcoming environment.”
According to Microsoft, the reactive voice reporting feature is designed with players in mind and to be “quick and easy”, giving players full control over what to capture and report and the ability to quickly switch back to gameplay and “…finalize the report when their game is over.”
Microsoft explained that this feature is to broadly support thousands of games that offer in-game multiplayer voice chat, including “…Xbox 360 backward-compatible titles.”
While the reporting feature is similar to regular gameplay video capture, it’s for content moderation purposes only, meaning that those clips will not appear in recent captures or be downloaded, modified, or shared.
Only the player has access to the clips captured until it is submitted. Before being submitted the clips can last on consoles for up to 24 online hours and players will be given reminders within that period of time or the clip will be erased from the console automatically.
Microsoft explained that this feature is to broadly support thousands of games that offer in-game multiplayer voice chat, including “…Xbox 360 backward-compatible titles.”
“Implementing voice moderation is a huge step in keeping the community at Xbox safer,” said Xbox Ambassador, SammieChaos. “I feel more confident knowing that Xbox has gone a step further to ensure we experience a positive environment not just through text chat, but through voice chat as well.”
This is Microsoft’s latest effort in improving its safety and moderation features for its Xbox consoles. The reactive voice reporting feature will be available to English console players in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand via the Xbox Insiders program. Support for additional languages is actively being worked on by Microsoft and will likely be revealed in the coming months.