A message from PlayStation’s Global Consumer Experience team.
Hi everyone. I’m Catherine Jensen, and I head up the Global Consumer Experience division here at PlayStation. Our department works every day to create the best possible gaming experience for our community on PlayStation Network. We also manage the @AskPlayStation customer support channel and create troubleshooting guides to help gamers find solutions. Our goal is to help foster a fun and positive experience when you’re playing online with friends and other gamers.
Managing online safety is an important part of ensuring that. We believe that it’s critical that gamers be able to quickly and accurately report abuse or harassment if they experience it while on PlayStation Network. As part of this initiative, we’ve been preparing to roll out a new feature on the PS5 console that enables gamers to report verbal harassment through a new Voice Chat reporting function. Its sole purpose is to help in reporting of inappropriate behavior, including actions that violate our Community Code of Conduct. Please note that this feature will not actively monitor or listen in on your conversations – ever – and it’s strictly reserved for reporting online abuse or harassment.
PlayStation gamers learned about this new function in an unexpected way following the recent PS4 8.00 system update. We didn’t clearly communicate this feature or explain why we were introducing it, and we apologize for that. When the PS5 console launches in November, PS5 users will be able to chat with PS4 users — which is why we needed to include an advisory with the latest PS4 system update.
We should have more clearly explained why this function was being rolled out, along with details on how it will work on the PS5 console, so let me walk you through that now.
Once the PS5 console launches, if a PS5 player needs to file a harassment report, they will be able to include up to a 40 second-long Voice Chat clip in their report — 20 seconds of the main conversation with the other player, plus an additional 10 seconds before and after the conversation selection. Only the most recent five minutes of a Voice Chat will be available for a player to use for this reporting function.
These reports can be submitted directly through the PS5 console, and will be sent to our Consumer Experience team for moderation, who will then listen to the recording and take action, if needed. Some submitted reports won’t be valid, and our team will take this as an opportunity to provide guidance and education. There won’t be an option to opt-out of this Voice Chat recording function because we want all users to feel safe when playing with others online, not just those who choose to enable it.
Thanks for reading, and I’m hoping this gives you a better idea about our goals for this new function. We appreciate your support, and want you to know that our team will always work to create a positive experience on PlayStation so you can focus on playing great games and having fun with your friends.
But did you need to completely break the party system to achieve this?
because their logic is now “If it ain’t broke, let’s break it”
What Sony needs to do is their own Playstation Social Media.
They already have communities like on Social Media, now they just need a website to combine everything into one giant Behemoth of a social network. Plus Sony has Play Memory to store pictures they can all add that up together to make the best place to game on Earth.
I know I’m being a bit vague on the details, but you could be the Twitter or Instagram of gaming, they have flaws like limiting the time of each videos uploaded or downscalling the resolution. I know Sony could do much better than having a bunch of different independent services if they were all working together.
Lots of money to be made in Social Media.
1 thing I would love being implemented would be to have saved replays of your games to cut down on memory that direct video cost on the crucial memory space.
Final Fantasy Dissidia has that on the PSP where it saves the actions taken by the player and recreates it whenever you want to replay and record them into video.
The save game files are only 85kb, standard mp4 of that same gameplay is an average 100mb or more and they aren’t full HD or anything, so 4k videos would take even bigger part of the internal memory than just recreation of the action.
Now, this does mean that you’ll need to reprocess the gameplay again before getting a mp4 video out of it, but think of all the internal storage you save by doing so, saving all the actions of your game as a save file, to then take out whichever parts you want to make a video out of.
I have over 2 Tb of gameplay stored on External and Internal HDD on the PS4 and that method would drastically cut the cost of memory, allowing for more games purchases giving more revenue for Sony.
YouTubers will also love you for it, giving you good promotion.
And, all that saved space means more place for games.
Agree completely. While the chat recording message was bungled, the actual functionality of parties was also changed and is so broken.
CommandingTiger
That is purely down to the developers of the games to implement, it is not a system functionality.
Just look at the Gran Turismo series use of the Replay function.
MaxDieHard
I am well aware of that, but if Sony could make it easier as an add-on to game engines, or baked in the PS5, kinda like what they did when they forced trophies.
That would be great if games in conjunction with the PS5 would have that ability.
Obviously, that is something Sony needs to create for then developers to easily implement inside their games.
Obviously, recording gameplay option would still remain there for games that don’t have that support yet.
First party studios can easily bake that in game, some games are talking about rewinding your progress, that means they already are tracking your gameplay and could easily implement it.
Imagine GBs of data of 4k video reduced to KB of saved data. That’s a true game changer.
SSDs space is going to be a huge bottleneck for gamers, so let’s make it more efficient.
Also just to add something, the SSD is already storing cache data from games you’ve played according to Marc Cerny, that’s certainly a good spot to implement such a feature.
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OK. I understand being able to “report” abuse, but Sony has completely ruined party chat. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that everyone wants the original party system back! I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m being a jerk here, but this new system sucks!
I feel harassed by these people making 15k/month while traveling the world during a pandemic. I’M JEALOUS OKAY
I think too many people jumped the gun after the PS4 advisory, but I’m glad to hear further clarification of the feature. Communication is always good, hope to see more updates like this.
That’s what happens when they add something without giving a heads up. Especially when it involves privacy. What I don’t like is we can’t opt out. But I only party chat with the same people so I don’t see this being a issue.
@GaMeR_bOi_83, I don’t think opting out should be an option. It defeats the purpose. The abusive people could then just opt out and continue being abusive.
Can u change it back to when we were able to make a party by our selfs without inviting someone?
Amen Brother!
This is borderline illegal in many areas. It’s only a matter of time before this changes.
Sony has smarter business people than you. If it was illegal then they wouldn’t have wasted their time doing it.
Them giving this warning makes it not illegal. In order to access the feature, you need to see the warning and then consent to being recorded making it legal (Which is why they needed to tell PS4 users for the PS5 feature). If you don’t want to be recorded, you don’t use the feature.
It’s not illegal. You are being made aware that things might be recorded by your fellow chat members. The legality is entirely about being recorded without your knowledge in some areas. Unless you’re a racist bigot, you have nothing to worry about. Also it’s your fellow chat group members (who you should already know, and trust) that would potentially be recording, not Sony, so if you don’t trust your friends then don’t be a part of any chat groups.
It is actually legal to record private conversations in most countries of the world. The legal use of such recordings is regulated in some countries and has limitations. Informed consent is the only requirement for most countries where there are legal restrictions and in most cases only 1 party needs to agree.
To clarify for everyone, it is illegal in California for Sony to record convos without consent, which is why they give that warning. California residents have the full right to sue Sony for doing this kind of thing, and even though they give a warning, this won’t stop someone from filing a lawsuit anyway.
@ziggurcat you are incredibly shortsighted: “Unless you’re a racist bigot, you have nothing to worry about”.
Arguing that you don’t have to worry unless you are x, y or z is not the point. It’s about privacy.
“Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying I don’t care about free speech because I have nothing to say” – Edward Snowden.
@cryptochrome242 that quote doesnt apply lol. It’s very broad, and nevermind the absurd difference in the subject matter behind that quote and local recording that you can choose to give Sony access to through a report upload.
As a whole, privacy is important, but as with free speech, privacy MUST have limits for the safety of others. No one is saying they want zero privacy. What you do behind closed doors is your business. However what you say to someone else is their busines. People need the means to hold others accountable for what they say. That has always been the case online or offline.
@jamie: No. Wrong. It is illegal to record without one’s knowledge, not consent. You are consenting in this case by agreeing to their ToS, plus they are letting you know that your voice may be recorded by other chat group members (Sony is not the one recording). And even then, you can record someone without their knowledge in California if that recording can be used as evidence towards a crime.
@crypto:
It’s not shortsighted – this feature is designed to moderate exactly that kind of activity. Therefore, if you’re not engaging in any of that, then you don’t have any risk of being banned/moderated. Also, this isn’t allowing any old rando to eavesdrop on your conversations, so your precious privacy will remain intact. And if you don’t trust your friends, then they’re not really your friends, now, are they?
People keep throwing out the Free Speech argument not really understanding that it does not mean you’re free from consequences. Also, it is only related to one’s ability to criticize the government without fear of getting thrown in prison (or worse: murdered), it does not give people license to be a bigot/bully.
it’s not illegal at all lol.
Crypto – I’d be more inclined to believe you if you hadn’5 have likened Bigotry and racism to free speech.
Free Speech doesn’t mean you can go around shouting abuse at people.
Just want to jump in and clarify…
They’re talking about party chats, not in game chats. This is absolutely a privacy and security issue, and they are trying to “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist. Honest question, what percentage of the community uses party chats that are public and not just for trusted friends/family? I’m sure it’s definitely less than 10%. Why does Sony need to police our PRIVATE conversations?
Well, if your famly report you to Sony, then they’re not worth having in your social circle.
I’m not worried about my family or friends reporting me for anything. I’m wondering what the REAL reason is that Sony needs to listen to my private invite based conversations. What problem are they solving?
Actually for all those comments saying it is legal because it is in Sony’s TOS are all wrong. You cannot record someone without their knowledge of it at all. In this case Sony is telling you they might but if another player does Sony cannot protect them from any legal action and by law would have to provide such recordings and who they came from to the law or lawyers of anyone prosecuting players for doing such.
So go ahead and record and report because the smart ones will sue not only the player but Sony for giving the player the ability to do so.
This is just like gun makers getting sued for people shooting other people with their products. Sony will eventually be sued themselves for this.
“This would be borderline illegal if they didn’t follow all of the legalities to avoid making it illegal and instead making it totally legal.”
Okay bro lol.
They implemented it for China’s sake. If you look at the tos you can’t Speak ill about China. Technically it is illegal but there’s loopholes
Cool feature 👍, thanks for doing what you can to keep gaming positive.
Any comment on fixing the PS Party Chat system so that:
1. You are able to create a party at will
2. You can control via mute who can hear you and
3. People can see available party chats without having to invited to weird groups
If they did that I would be happy. I’m refusing to use the party chat until things are fixed.
@Onyx_Shi – I’m boycotting parties and messages until they roll this back.
For the longest time, I’ve had messaging set to “Friends Only” because of the amount of spam you get otherwise. Since this update, I’ve gotten so many group messages on top of party invites, I set my privacy so no one can message me. But that also means I won’t be joining any parties.
This was a terrible, blind change, and needs to be reverted immediately. Parties need control, and when anyone can add new players to a message group, allowing those people to join the associated chat party, there’s no control.
The privacy and recording thing is… whatever. But the party functionality needs to go back how it was. It wasn’t broken in any way, shape, or form, but it’s broken now. Fix it by putting it back how it was.
If it goes back to as it was then wave goodbye to cross gen chat as the new system is the ps5 version
Yep this is going to be a problem sony is going to take major heat for this and I want to say one thing to the people who think this type of blatant disregard for personal privacy thoughs who value security over liberty shall have neither Bingaman Franklin
Please roll this update back and reevaluate the significant changes being made to the party chat system. Nothing was broken, it worked great until 8.00. Now every player is riddled with useless and excessive group chats, multiplayer and LFG opportunities have been totally crushed, and solo players no longer have a place to ignore game chat and wait for friends to get on.
This update blindsided the community that’s gotten familiar with the original party system for over 7 years, and nobody asked for this change. Make the Party and Messages category separate again and just add the ability to send a mass party invite to whatever group your in, 8.00 implemented this backwards. It was a poor choice to try this out on the general public (especially after the beta version had already received terrible feedback) a month away from launch. Please go through the various Playstation message boards online and read up on how everyone is perceiving this update. Thanks for your time.
This
Yes! Someone who understands! This! This right here Sony! Follow this man/woman he/she will lead you to even more greatness and positivity than you’ve been able to process with your tiny minds.
New chat system is the ps5 version of chat so cross gen parties can happen
Pretty sure this isn’t legal in states like California that prohibits audio recording without consent. Lawsuits are likely.
By using the console you accept the TOS so hardly illegal
It’s without knowledge, not consent. You’re being made aware that the conversations might be recorded by your fellow chat group members. And in California, you can still record without the other person’s knowledge if that is used as evidence towards a crime.
Hi! Not illegal, it would be if they were doing under the table or without your knowledge. They have this announcement and it will likely be included in terms and conditions. By using the platform you would be consenting, if you have a problem with being unable to use aggressive and hateful language then maybe you need to personally reevaluate rather then blaming the platform.
If their a Japanese company does the US state law apply to them.
Not an American but I’ve seen them violate Australian consumer Law in the past with no cares in the world.
Just to point out that in those same TOS you agreed to them putting the price up for now and plus as long as they give 60 days notice
Definitely not illegal. Absolutely unethical.
Great feature and people were overreacting too much. Obviously Sony wasn’t going to record everything that every person was saying in a party chat on PSN. The only people upset about this are those who do verbally abuse others online because they are now worried about getting banned in the future. To that all I have to say is good you should be scared.
that’s not why they’re mad. If you used parties on playstation, you’d know they added a change that wasn’t needed and made it so you needed to be in a group with a person to have a party with them. People are fine with the audio thing, but the actual party system got changed and that’s why they’re mad.
Your the guy that would be first in line to report lol. Deff a liberal over here can’t take a little trash talk.
Are you stu- bruh there are so many ways to get people falsely banned off of psn based off of this stupid voice chat update. On top of that they f-ed up pretty much everything else we had already gotten use to.
What a ridiculous statement! People are peeved because it’s a massive step back regarding it being user friendly. I doubt most would have batted an eye had Sony just somewhat maintained the old model for party sharing/creating while including the new moderation mentioned in the update. There is next to no reason to even have the party option anymore and the real shame is I doubt Sony will be rectifying this.
This is all fine, but let us start Parties by ourselves
Why is it mandatory to make a group chat for there to be a party? Why is it mandatory to completely break the party system withholding me from being able to invite friends after they have been “added.” I don’t like this new update at all and I hope you put normal parties on the PS5 so we can look for public parties even if we aren’t in a group chat.
This is the ps5 version of chat
Thanks Michael Owen for that pointless reply.
No problem I enjoy pointing out that this is the end of the ps4 cycle and every update from now on for the ps4 has to pass over to ps5 or the same people complaining that they broke ps4 will scream that a new update broke their ps5 working with their ps4
I fully understand the whole reporting users in party, but why was party chat changed from something so good to something bad? I can mute others, but they can still hear me, No more private and public parties, I can block someone but they can still join the party, couldn’t you guys add the reporting system without messing up the entire party chat system? I don’t want to have seperate groups of friends, I enjoyed when my friends were able to join and leave as they pleased, and if i didnt want someone I would just make the party private or kick them out the party completely. Sony really messed up a big thing when it comes to playing with friends. I hope they solve these issues before the PS5 comes out
Bring back public party chats, please!
Public chats Higher chance you will be reported for saying anything against TOS and banned
Sounds like it works similarly to when a game crashes and records the last 15 seconds of the game, letting you send as an attachment.
That works for me! Definitely should be able to better support harassment by players, which is a real thing
Me and my friends do not like this version of the party system it blindsided us so hard and now all i hear when in game chat is a kid thats just loud for no reason when i was playing gta and i cant even make a party with just me cuz you have to make it a instant invitation to your friends when i want to be in a party by myself
Invite someone who is not on or message a friend and tell them not to join
It’s not needed. There’s already an option to mute someone so reporting is useless. You don’t want to hear someone – mute him. This reporting feature will only result in massive amounts of false reports sent by people who don’t like you.
This is a legitimate concern. Especially now with parties being much more difficult to manage, and every participant will have access to a five-minute cache of audio that he/she could selectively clip and report. If the system works as described, I think it could INCREASE harassment and toxicity and potentially spill over onto other platforms (ex., Discord) too.
You’ll typically be in a chat group with your friends, no? If you’re joining chat group with a bunch of randos, then that’s the risk you have to take, I guess. As long as you’re not acting like a racist bigot or harassing anyone just because of their gender/sexuality, you’ve got nothing to worry about. No one is going to get banned for having an innocent conversation, and they have checks in place to prevent people from abusing the system with false reports.
Dont forget this person can still hear u if u mute them 🙈
In 2020 everyone’s racist and bigot and insert any other offensive behavior here. Record someone’s conversation long enough and something always will be offensive for someone. Conversations should be as private as possible. This feature will only bring trouble.
I’ve been in party chats where out of the 7 or 8 people, I only know one person who sent me the invite. Typically when they start talking about smoking weed is when I jump out. As an American I believe in freedom of speech, as long as you don’t hurt anyone, and hurt feelings don’t count.
This is like the racist button on yelp. People are going to start actively looking for people to ban, cause they have no lives.
Not really a false report if you say something bad. If they report you for nothing they get the penalty
Watsuke – Good job talking about weed and racist commentary isn’t about freedom of speech then.
They are (more so the latter, probably not the former) against ToS though.
Thanks for clarification. Regarding the party system, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
i hope you change it back in the near future..
There’s safety in privacy, and yet it’s possible that the last five minutes of my voice could always be sent to the ears of a judge I will never meet?
Are you new to internet moderation?
Can we ge tconfirmation on UAC2 support, so US people who take our audio seriously, can know if Sony is too. Or do we need to look into headsets which are always overpriced even the “audiophile” ones
It should go without saying that no one should be abused or harassed, but people need to take some personal responsibility. If you’re inviting garbage people to your party or joining a party containing garbage people, then I don’t know what to tell you. You can leave the chat, you can block people, you can report text messages, you can mute people in game, those tools should be enough. To me this sounds like a pointless ‘feature’ that wasn’t worth the bad press that the poor communication of said feature caused. The old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” really does apply here. Thanks for the blog post, though. It should hopefully clear up some of the misinformation floating around.
Can you spell out what the definition of harassment and abuse will be? For example, if I say “you got wrecked, son” in a joking manner, will some random user be able to report that for misgendering? Will I be able to report someone calling me “white boy” or “n***a” or is it only specific terms the mods deal inappropriate? Is it a form of harassment if I don’t support certain candidates in any election and someone starts calling me a supremacists of sort?
In other words, can we see the booklet on which is going to land us a ban according to your guidelines since everyone today has their own list of good and bad words these days and what is and isn’t appreciate?
I hope if anything this is just a function to block death threats and nothing for overly sensitive people who think anything beyond “great job” is toxic behavior.
If you need to ask, then you’re already part of the problem.
Are you the forums mod or something? You’ve responded to a good chunk of these posts. Almost like you’re borderline harassing people that don’t conform to you’re very beliefs. Very toxic, friend.
It’s basically anything you would not say to a persons face while they hold a gun to you
They’ll look at context just like Microsoft and Sony have done in the past.
Saying “you got wrecked, son” is highly unlikely to get you a ban, unless the mod is having a particularly bad day, but I’d assume you’d be able to apeal that anyway.
Anything to do with race is hot button at the moment anyway, so any form of racism should, quite rightly, result in a ban, no matter what the ‘context’ you’d want to argue is. Besides, if it’s in a party with your friends, they won’t report you, unless you’ve slept with their partner maybe.
It’ll be the extreme language that gets you banned. I doubt they’d ban you for something quite clearly said in jest.
But what about the community section?
I asked. They said, “no information at this time”, which tells me that they’re axing the Communities.
Here’s the problem with that. When joining a party, a majority of the time, its with people you know. Thus, not really needing to report anyone. By removing public/private party, we are now forced to create groups for every person we party up with and creating an extra unnecessary step.
I used to use the quick menu to invite people from my friends list using the three dots icon. It was quick and easy. Now if I do that, it will kick me from the first party and move me to another. In order to invite someone else I need to go to the actual party menu (Something I rarely see), add a friend, then select the friend I want to invite. Three extra steps of navigating menus, which are now slower thanks to update 8.00.
Please, if you actually read the comments, try to fix it. I know you’re getting ready for ps5 but its no reason to ruin the current ps4 system. Revert or fix the issues. Bring back public/private party system.
I don’t think this system will be that favorable because people want to speak freely without having to be worried about someone getting offended or just reporting something just because they can.
18+ comment = No one wants a snowflake getting and reporting us and they can just report us so easily the majority of this community thinks this is dumb and will probably cause a lot of problems in the future and will aid Xbox in winning the Console War – Thank You
More like you want to be able to say anything you want to anyone you want and not have to deal with consequences. Not how the world works bud.
if you have the type of friends that report you, maybe they aren’t your friend at all.
Very clear and simple explanation about a feature that hopefully will make me go and play a multiplayer game again in the future, thank you.
That said, the whole communication to us consumers about the PS5 is a best chaotic, inconsistent and because of that confusing as many outlets will try to fill in the many gaps with (probably) wrong information. I can’t tell you how frustrating that is to everyone I know and loves PlayStation.
Why not have Hemen Hulst or Shuhei Yoshida or Mark Cerney sit down and walk us trough the console and the UI, tells us about expanding the SSD and explain about backwards compatibility, adding a HDD or SSD to the system for PS4 games etc.
Put time stamps in there and you are done.
Oh and give big tech sites and gaming sites a PS5 like MS has done. Now it feels you are holding something back you don’t want us to know. All the “not telling” can make something exciting but it’s to a point that the biggest nonsense is now doing the rounds and it’s frustrating. We are going to put a lot of money down, please treat us with respect and dignity.
Catherine Jensen okay… but can we have normal public party’s back?
I mean nobody likes this update…
And if u mute someone i dont want him to hear me either!!!!!!!!! This is super annoying
Also if i block someone that person shouldn’t be able to join my party chats….
U dividing players now instead of connecting them…
Seriously give us back the old party system because this update is really really bad… and i dont wanna be part of it like this and i really considering to get a xbox for this…
And also it slows our playstation menu when in a game and wanna go to the menu… :-(
Yes indeed! Bring back the old system!
Missing the old xbox live mw2 days where all the trash talk made you a stronger person actually and you laugh about it in the end. This is just ridiculous. And the fact that you have 5 minutes of recording to look back on means that it is being actively recorded by your console, it might be erased after 5 minutes but it is still being recorded. I don’t like this. You push competition but you don’t want no trash talk…doesn’t make sense.
Bunch of soft people now man this world is turning into a bubble. Can’t hurt anyone’s feelings or say anything. Trash talk is part of any competitive sport or gaming period. Grow a pair and move on. They have a mute button for a reason
This is not trash talk but trash people they are filtering out
Did you have to change the whole party system to record 40 seconds of voices lol please revert this sucks
Aside from that. Please revert back to the old party system that is separate from the text chat. The only good idea there was adding an all mute button, everything else is much worse than what it was. Also it is just objectively worse to combine two restrictions into one with parental controls.
I’m honestly not worried about this at all. My issue is how terrible the new setup is for making party chats. It was perfectly fine how it was, and now you’ve ruined it and set it up to cause so many pointless issues that didn’t need to exist. I do t know what kind of morons you have working in that company, but everyone who designed it, tested it, and approved it needs to be fired.
The new party system sucks and you seriously need to change it back to how it was. Just do it.
Agreed!
Thank you PlayStation for taking steps to make gamer safer for everyone!! To everyone freaking out: read the article carefully. This feature is designed to only record 5 minutes max at a time and of that only 40 seconds can be reported, this is completely legal and many other companies have similar systems in place. If you have issues with PlayStation trying to limit hateful and aggressive language on the platform then maybe reevaluate your personal choices.
remove the update this is why many players going to pc and xbox
The only people who are upset about this, and might be doing that would be the ones are are guilty of the things this feature is designed to moderate.
Or people concerned about free speech especially in the privacy of their own homes.
Oh they are? How many? You got numbers? Lmao. If this cause terrible human beings to go elsewhere I say good.
@lostie: Free speech does not mean free from consequences. You’re also forgetting that free speech is only in regards to speaking out against the government as it allows you to criticize without fear of being sent to prison, etc… It’s not a license to be a bigot or bully.
Ziggurcat, you’re on every post being like, “If you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear, citizen.”
The privacy concerns are legitimate, stop excusing a bad policy.
@subscryber:
Nope, not a legitimate concern. No one’s privacy is being compromised because no one can randomly eavesdrop/listen in on your private conversations if they’re not part of your private chat group. Also, Sony isn’t listening to any of those conversations, either.
FrEeDoM oF sPeEcH iS oNlY aGaInSt GoVeRnMeNmEnT.
Wow, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Please quit being toxic and harassing people that have a basic understanding of what simply freedom of speech means.
It is only against the government. That’s the whole point of it.
Ok Ziggurcat everyone is right alot of people aren’t happy with this feature cause it could be used to illegal listen to people in their homes. Second no I can literally walk up to a cop in the united states and as long as I say in my opinion you are a fat B**ch and the cop could not arrest me for that because it’s free speech third Im someone who does not game online because of the toxic people I stopped gaming online because I got reported as a bit cause I wouldn’t talk to people and I got high kills on the old 360 halo xbox live and sony doesn’t seem to be learning anything from any one else so please stop being toxic if you don’t have anything constructive to say please stop off the comments please
I understand the need to moderate such interactions however if someone is joining a party they are communicating with consent. I can see this system being abused just for fun but i am also not comfortable in any way to have a mic recording conversations even though you say you are not listening but if there is a remote possibility that you can is outrageous. There should be an option to stop recording completely.
The only ones doing any recording would be your fellow chat group members. Sony isn’t recording or listening to any of the conversations. If you don’t trust your friends, then don’t join any chat groups or just don’t join any random chat group with people you don’t know. It seems the only people worried/upset about this are the ones who engage in the type of language/behaviour that this feature is designed to moderate.
I agree. In fact in Sony’s TOS and private policy states that any content entered into their ecosystem is owned by them. Even allowed to be redistributed without your consent.
Horrible, horrible feature. No one wants this. I’m an adult that plays with adults. If parents want this for their children, make it so for ages under 18. Anything over 18 and it’s just dumb. People know they can leave a chat if they don’t want to be a part of it. There’s literally ZERO reason why SONY should give ANYONE the option to record our voices. Bad bad bad.
👍
I found one of the problem people right here.
Why @Mercenary09 ? Hmm? Because I value my privacy and I don’t want anyone to have the option to record my voice? That doesn’t make me a problem person.
I’m an adult and I act like an adult. I’m not some kid playing Mature content games- that, mind you, only adults should be playing to begin with- that gets angry or upset because they lose.
We talk in PRIVATE chats for a reason.
So…in your new ToS. You bring up Harrassment and bullying and as you so put it “Trolling” in the recording aspect of people. If people “troll” record and submit a party chat report for no other reason than to “Be a jerk” as you also said. How will your human moderator that is in charge of listening on this be able to bring context to the situation? Even with the amount of recording before and after the report was submitted. There is no way to fully be able to moderate that situation with just a 30-60 second voice chat clip. And someone or multiple are going to get wrongfully banned and lose all of their games and account for nothing…due to a daulty system and a rushed idea to stop harrassment.
It will be evident whether the report is filed with malicious intent.
You know full well that SONY will have every chat recorded and saved. Period. And pretty soon…. we’ll all be getting pop up ads on their apps based on our conversations. Just give it time and watch.
Party chats are the players choice to enter and leave. Also most, if not all party chats are friend chats. This seems to be a feature that should be imbedded into online play for games. Not on the native PS5 community which conversations are thought to be private. In America we LET Sony PlayStation into our homes. But should have the option to opt out to be recorded within out own homes, which infringe on our free speech in our private homes.
Facts thank you
Agreed. You know full well that SONY will have every chat recorded and saved. Period. And pretty soon…. we’ll all be getting pop up ads on their apps based on our conversations. Just give it time and watch.
Party voice charts should definitely not be linked to messages
I also should be able to join public chats with other non recurring friends
Trash talking with randos was a good part of the fun in multiplayer, but I get it, that is part of the past. Still, this part concerns me “Please note that this feature will not actively monitor or listen in on your conversations – ever – and it’s strictly reserved for reporting online abuse or harassment. ” – Source: Trust me, bro.
The social dilemma
Back in my day, we would simply kick anyone being disruptive in our parties. Such an easy, non-privacy breaching feature. Now it seems the ability to do that has been removed entirely, among with the plethora of other party options you gutted in the latest PS4 update. The future is not looking good from here out.
Thank you for finally adding an option to moderate voice chat.
Bet you can’t wait to report people and get them banned.
@jdrev Well if said people aren’t saying anything wrong then they have nothing to worry about huh. If you make the choice to do wrong then you deal with the consequences.
Except people who are the wrongdoers are going to use this system to provoke and entrap people and also provide tons of fake reports because they play drunk or drugged or are trolls.
You don’t oppress 100% of a population to solve problems for less than 5% (guess and that is likely a high guess) when no physical or human rights dangers are present… this recording system literally helps no one and should be planned in a better way where it only applies to minors and their parent accounts…
Humm… how do I put this nicely. This is ridiculous. In no way shape or form should you be allowed to listen to my conversation online. Second maybe people should not be so soft and learn to mute people? What is a little competition without some smack talking? Why don’t you just put everyone in a little bubble so they can’t get their feelings hurt…. welcome to 2020 way to simp Sony.
Sony isn’t listening to your conversations online.
Another one of the problem people. There’s a difference between trash talking with your friends and harassing others online. The world doesn’t operate on YOUR rulebook.
It’s simple this is a way to stop people saying stuff to kids and to cut down on racist people who join random people to call them a n word
Wow this chat party update is so bad it is way to hard to get people in a chat party and then u can’t kick the person being bad in the chat just all bad I am going to pc because of this I like it the way it was so good bye ps4 and ps5 so sad but u don’t care I so hope u guys loess a lot money on the new ps5 because of this
But what about the random Public Parties from the rest of your friendlist..?
This update could’ve just been an Add-on, not something to go two step backwards and destroy the current party system.
When I first saw it, I noticed that there was no way to make a party private or open to my friends list. I found the removal of this particular aspect to be annoying and quite a pain. Sometimes I want my party to be open to my entire friends list and sometimes I just want specific people in. The forcing of specific groups makes this current iteration seem ridiculous, especially since we as the ones playing are already curating who we talk with by creating our own chat parties. I doubt people would bother reporting a person in their chat party. It’s more likely that a random player in game chat will be reported than a friend in a chat party. I understand that you wanted to make a system for PS4 and PS5 players to converse, but my question to you is, why couldn’t it be done under the original format? I mean, we were still able to report players for whatever reason. Just my thoughts.
Dude nobody wants this feature, the people who wrote the code of conduct are not gamers friends they are lawyers friends because your only trying to cover y’all’s own asses. The way your system works is dumb, I got a month ban from sending a picture from a PS4 title and there is no way to appeal the decision to ban someone. I should be allowed to face my accuser, also shouldn’t receive a ban for showing your content. You guys are jokes. Don’t send any pictures of Southpark you’ll get banned to protect the children.
I hate this if your In a party chat with someone harrassing you it’s your own fault you can just leave it.
Now it makes everyone who is used to talking sh*** cautious because you don’t know if it’s being recorded all because some kids got their feeling hurt playing party chat with strangers.
There is no real party chat with strangers anymore as they have to message you
In all honesty, the new system for protection is a good idea. So long as it stays manual and doesn’t have a bot to review it.
However, the new Party/Message merge is quite bad. The old system of parties being able to be public or private was good. With the new system, you can’t do open parties, which though I never used it, made organizing larger parties easier, especially if you had a larger friends list. This also limits friends of friends joining as well, again, just makes things harder. You also can’t make private parties anymore, which was useful if you wanted your mic in but didn’t want game chat. Again, just making things difficult.
Hello Catherine Jensen I understand the party report system but it’s very ignorant of you to disregard the fact that you guys introduced a new system with the party chat that completely invalidates having a friends list. When it comes to public parties it was nice being able to hop into a friends party to say hello or catch up with them and often times make new friends with a friend of a friend. The new party system is highly inconvenient and should’ve been beta tested with a majority of users. The new interface is not user friendly and maybe you are someone that has a set group of friends but a majority of us have multitudes and enjoy meeting friends of friends. I shouldn’t have to make endless group messages it creates clutter and unwarranted interactions to constantly add players between different group messages. I wanted a PS5 because I wanted to be playing on the most innovative system yet outside of getting an Xbox but all you guys have shown us is that you can’t be consistent. The system of public parties you had before was beautiful if there was someone I didn’t want to join on my friends list…then I don’t think they’d be on my friends list to begin with. Please fix this Catherine it’s okay to Clean up a system and polish it but changing it entirely Into an inconvenience isn’t moving forward. I’ll support the future of gaming but currently getting a new system from you guys might not be what I want to do right away if this is what We have to put up with. You may never read this but by some miracle I hope you do.
I hope they read all of these comments and just change it back!
They are not changing anything
Sony could make an option to disable both voice chat and recording feature simultaneously and let people choose
“if it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it”. You guys had a good idea going with just minor tweaks. But, overall, the party system should’ve been left alone. I do like the idea of the automatic/sever connectivity to the party for overall party improvement. If you guys don’t decide to revert, consider this for an update. 1. The party should have an invite only feature and only the party leader can add people or receive requests to do so. 2. Remove a kick from party feature (not sure why it was removed). 3. Put the mute system back to normal. You mute someone and the opposing side can still hear them. These minor tweaks would make huge improvements if you can’t go back to the old system. In my opinion, the party system is a cool idea. You can have certain parties for different games you played, but you’re stepping into the realm of discord chats with having certain groups when PlayStation is in its own lane. Playstation needs more focus on connectivity/internet improvements, not party.