No, Sony Is Not Recording Your PS5’s Party Voice Chat

Sony has come out to clarify exactly how recordings on your PS5’s party voice chat will look like.

This comes off the heels of Sony’s recent firmware update 8.00 for the PlayStation 4. In which, the update included, they would record Party Chat audio and it will send to Sony when a user reports harassment.

Understandably so, this caused some confusion and concern throughout the community. As the topic, of invasion of privacy through technology, usually does. But, in a blog post, PlayStation has further explained what this update means.

Regarding PS5’s Party Voice Chat

Catherine Jensen, the head of the Global consumer Experience division at PlayStation explains:

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. We didn’t clearly communicate this feature or explain why we were introducing it, and we apologize for that.

It’s nice to see the acknowledgement of the issue and Jensen continues on with how the feature works:

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.

Clarification on Sony’s Error

The clarification always earns appreciation. It is not necessarily Sony but rather, players who find what you say offensive that will have the ability to record. Nonetheless, this really seems like an unforced error on Sony’s part.

With this statement, hopefully it will clear up any worry that fans might have.

The PlayStation 5 will release in the US and Japan on Nov. 12 with the rest of the world following on Nov. 19.