Fortnite is cracking down on abuse with a new feature that lets you record in-game audio and report it to Epic Games moderators.
With voice reporting on, the most recent five minutes of audio is recorded on a rolling basis. If there's any bullying, harassment, discrimination, or other inappropriate behavior, players can upload the clips and submit them. Otherwise, chats are deleted every five minutes.
To use the feature, enter Fortnite's main settings and then head to Audio > Voice Reporting and select either Always On or Off When Possible. Players under the age of 18 have the feature enabled all the time no matter what they do. If they don't want to be recorded, they can mute or turn off voice chat entirely in settings.
Always On is self-explanatory. For the other setting, the only time it doesn't record is if you're in a party formed among friends and everyone there has Off When Possible selected. "Voice reporting will be on if Party Channels include one or more players with voice reporting set to 'Always On' or a player [is] added through Looking for Party," Epic says.
Recordings live on the player's device and are not uploaded to the cloud. Epic Games does not have access to them at all unless they are uploaded with a report.
Clips are deleted after 14 days or the length of a sanction, whatever is longer. Appeals will also keep the audio clip alive so moderators can review it. And Epic notes it will retain audio "for as long as legally required," if it comes to that.
Reporting otherwise works the same as it did before. The person reporting the other player remains anonymous even with the voice recording enabled. Thus, if you report someone and they get banned, they won't know it was you unless you tell them. Players who do get banned will have the ability to appeal the ban while also being shown which community rule they broke.
The new feature coincides with Fortnite's new age-based rating system that rolled out a few days ago. It also follows other platforms, such as Xbox, where temporarily recording voice files helps moderators hear what was said while also helping to keep potentially negative voice communications in check.
