Valorant players call for vote kick system, will Riot listen?

Fariha Bhatti Published 04/02/2022

Riot Games has been trying to neutralize toxic players through indirect means. Now Valorant players want to take matters into their own hands with a vote kick system.

Aim may help a player drop 30 kills, but winning a game of Valorant requires team effort and coordination. Unfortunately, teamwork is a luxury in Valorant games that few people enjoy due to toxic players, smurfs, and trolls. Toxicity in Valorant is increasing with the game’s popularity, making it tough to play.

A Valorant player recently shared a clip of a possible AFK Yoru moving with a bot. He requested Riot Games introduce a vote kick system to help the team continue its game without the fifth player sabotaging it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/sk8mw6/thank_you_riot/

According to the Redditor, Yoru wasn’t only AFK, but he wouldn’t drop the Spike so the team couldn’t even have a chance to win rounds short-handed. While a four-on-five win is possible if the skill gap is large enough, doing so when every attacker round is almost guaranteed to be a loss makes it impossible.

Can you kick someone in Valorant?

There’s no vote kick system in Valorant, which means players are stuck with any toxic teammates they’re assigned for the entirety of the game. However, players are now requesting Riot add a new kicking system with unique features to prevent trolls from exploiting it.

Riot Games might have avoided kick feature because malicious actors often abuse it to troll. This is a relatively common occurrence in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

However, Valorant’s unique queue system can prevent this from happening. A “ringer system” requires an entire team’s vote to remove someone from the game. This vote is often initiated by someone who has the most ELO. A person who’s AFK can’t possibly have a high score, which would prevent throwers and trolls from initiating a vote.

Alternatively, Riot recently introduced a lobby change to minimize toxicity against solo players. The four-person stacks would often troll the fifth solo player, but that’s no longer the case. Riot has banned four-stacks, so there would never be a lone player up against four players vote kicking. The ringer system can function effectively in Valorant’s 3-person lobbies with minimal opportunity for players to exploit it.

There are many risks of a vote kick system, but it’s become a necessity in 2022. With the increasing number of players in Valorant, toxicity has become a massive issue. A vote kick system can resolve this issue, but it may also trigger new ones. It remains to be seen how Riot tackles this problem in the coming months since it’d only grow.

Fariha Bhatti

About Fariha Bhatti

Fariha Bhatti is a long-time gaming writer who loves competitive FPS games and slots with particularly fun themes. She got her start playing classic games developed by SNK, from legendary fighting game series The King of Fighters to challenging platform franchise Metal Slug. She now spends most of her time playing Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 while working her way through new slot releases to find her next favorite. Fariha has been published at PCGamesN, TalkEsport and ONE Esports.

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