San Francisco, Nov 16 (IANS): Epic Games on Thursday introduced voice reporting in its popular game Fortnite to take action against players using voice chat to bully, harass, discriminate, or engage in other inappropriate behaviour.

Now, in addition to being able to block, mute, and report other players, the players will be able to submit audio evidence when reporting suspected violations of the company’s Community Rules.

“When voice reporting is on, the last five minutes of voice chat audio are captured on a rolling basis. This means only the immediate last five minutes of audio is reportable. As new audio is captured, any previous audio that's more than five minutes old is automatically deleted,” informed the company.

Voice chat audio is captured on your device — for example your gaming console or PC — not the Epic Games servers.

“Audio clips submitted to Epic for review will be auto-deleted after 14 days or the duration of a sanction, whichever is longer. In the event of an appeal, retention may be extended for up to 14 days so the sanction decision can be reviewed,” said the company.

If Epic needs to retain an audio clip to comply with legal obligations, it will be retained for as long as legally required. Voice reporting is always on for voice chats that include players under 18.

“If you’re a parent, you can manage your child’s voice chat permissions by logging into the Epic Account Portal and using Epic’s existing Parental Controls,” the company noted.

To report inappropriate conduct happening in voice chat, you can report a conversation in a Party or Game Channel.

The Fortnite voice reporting cannot be used to report conversations on other chat services (such as Discord or your console’s chat) because they are not operated by Epic, the company informed.