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Along with the arrival of the new season, Riot Games also recently announced its plans to battle disruptive behavior and hate speech in its games, by recording in-game voice chat. Starting off by implementation in Valorant, the developers have stated the recorded game comms will only be potentially accessed and reviewed when a report citing disruptive behaviour in voice chat has been made. The new change will be compulsory for all players within Valorant that wish to access voice chat, and while the system is currently still in development, Riot has stated that it will begin beta tests for voice chat recording in North America first.
Arriving as part of the 2.09 patch for Valorant, Riot has revealed the inclusion of a new mode for the game, named Replication. Following the same rules as Unrated, Replication differs in one aspect: everyone on the same team will play as the same agent. The agent will be selected via a lobby vote, and the agent with the most picks will be the corresponding team's choice for the match. A few adjustments will also be made to ensure the mode is playable, a “Flashguard” will be implemented, which will activate if a player gets flashbanged twice in the span of four seconds, offering five-second immunity against further flashes.
Along with Flashguard, player weapons, abilities and shields will be replenished at the beginning of every round, and while ultimates will not be refreshed, a point will be rewarded per round. For those that also play Riot Games’ replace Escalation for two weeks from the release of patch 2.09 on May 11.
Although the mode is currently temporary, it will no doubt be an interesting two weeks for Valorant players as everyone attempts to grapple with matches filled with the same Agent. Since the game was not balanced around teams playing as the same hero, chaos will definitely ensue as a match filled with Phoenixes turns into a floor is lava situation, or Killjoys filling the map with turrets.
Valorant is available on PC.
Source: PlayVALORANT/Twitter
