Now, ‘Fortnite’ players can report others by recording their voices. Here’s how.

Starting this Thursday, Fortnite players can now report others for being mean or doing bad things using voice recordings.

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, is adding this feature to help stop bullying, harassment, and bad behavior in the game. They want to make sure players feel safe and have a good time while playing.

According to a blog post by the Fortnite team, in addition to blocking, muting, and reporting other players, you can now provide audio proof when reporting someone for breaking the rules. 

To use voice reporting, you need to enable it. Fortnite captures the last five minutes of voice chat, automatically erasing it afterward, so you can only report the most recent five minutes of audio. Your anonymous report is then sent to Epic moderators for review. After 14 days or the duration of a penalty, the audio clip is deleted, unless Epic has to keep it for legal reasons.

Epic Games clarified that voice chat audio is securely stored on your device, not on Epic Games servers. They emphasized that Epic cannot access voice chat audio unless you have voice reporting turned on and submit a report.

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To ensure the reported audio corresponds to someone in the voice chat, Epic Games detailed their process in another blog post. They use public key cryptography, creating two keys—a public key and a private key. These keys authenticate identities, including the player’s Epic account, and encrypt data that only the other key can decrypt.

In their explanation, Epic stated, “To achieve this, we use public key cryptography to generate digital signatures so voice packets can be attributed to the correct participant. Packets are signed by the participant’s private key, and all other users can verify them using the sender’s public key, which prevents players from spoofing the system.” This method ensures the reliability and authenticity of the reported voice chat.

It’s worth noting that voice reporting is automatically enabled for voice chats involving players under 18. If players prefer not to have their audio recorded, they can mute themselves or turn off voice chat entirely by selecting “Off” in the voice chat settings.

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This development is intriguing, especially considering that in December of the previous year, Epic Games had to pay $520 million as a result of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations. The FTC claimed that Epic Games used “dark patterns” to encourage unintentional purchases and violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data without parental consent. During that time, the FTC stated that “Epic will be required to adopt strong privacy default settings for children and teens, ensuring that voice and text communications are turned off by default.” The current situation raises questions about how this aligns with the previous commitment.

Here’s how to enable voice reporting if you’re over 18.

Voice reporting in Fortnite: How to enable it

TOTAL TIME

• 2 minutes

WHAT YOU NEED

• Fortnite
• Epic Games account
• gaming console

How to Enable?

Step 1: Load ‘Fortnite’ and open Settings.

Step 2: Click “Audio” then “Voice Reporting”.

Step 3: Choose “Always On” or “Off When Possible.”

Step 4: If you pick “Always On”, voice reporting will be enabled for your channels.

If you choose the “Off When Possible” option, voice reporting will stay disabled in party channels as long as everyone in the party has this setting (although it will still be active in-game channels). However, if at least one player selects “Always On,” voice reporting will be activated for the entire party channel.