Fortnite is finally getting a new voice reporting system to help gamers submit audio evidence against those who may be violating community rules. Fortnite is highly popular among teenage gamers, and this could be a huge step in preventing teenagers from getting bullied or having to face inappropriate behavior while playing online. Gamers suspecting foul play will find the feature highly useful.
The feature was announced yesterday by Epic Games, and the Fortnite developers also explained ways in which the correct participants will be attributed to a given audio recording. Epic Games has also mentioned that any submitted audio recording will be deleted in a couple of weeks or until a sanction expires.
Epic Games Will Use Public Key Cryptography to Attribute the Recorded Audio’s Rightful Owner
Epic Games released its latest technical blog, in which the studio announced the new voice reporting system. The studio mentioned that it ensured the recordings were attributed to the right participant. Epic Games achieved this by using public key cryptography, which was used to generate digital signatures, so voice packets will always have the right user’s details.
Every gamer will now have a private key, which other gamers can verify using the “sender’s public key, which prevents players from spoofing the system.”
Every time a gamer logs in to play Fortnite, the game’s client will reportedly generate an Ed25519 elliptic curve key pair. This will be used in signing operations using OpenSSL, after which the client will send a copy of the player’s public key to the backend system. Epic Games stressed the fact that only the public key will be sent to the system along with the user’s authentication token, and if it goes well, players will get logged in once a signed token is received.
The Ed25519 algorithm used by Epic Games is said to have much better performance for both signing in and verifying voice packets compared to all the other traditional algorithms. The keys generated using this method are also said to be rather short, allowing for lower data transfers, which could be immensely valuable in a multiplayer game like Fortnite.
The Epic Online Services (EOS) Voice subsystem will get initialized by the Fortnite client every time a player signs in with their signing key pair. Every time players join a voice channel, the signed token will be replicated to all other participants by the signaling server, with the joining players getting a copy of signed tokens belonging to everyone else in the channel.
As players start talking, the EOS Voice subsystem will reportedly start sending these voice packets using the Ed25519 private key. Players can be assured that they only hear audio that can be cryptographically attributed to other participants in the channel.
Fortnite’s Voice Reporting, Audio Capture, and User Privacy Explained by Epic Games
Epic Games has stressed that the voice reporting system will use the participants’ devices to capture audio and will only be submitted to the system if the users explicitly choose to submit audio evidence to be reviewed by Epic.
Epic Games ensured the backend servers would not store every single bit of audio traffic, which would only get processed by Epic’s backend services in transit before being stored on participant devices. Due to this specific reason, if a user closes Fortnite and re-opens it, any buffered audio recording will no longer be available, meaning previous conversations will not be available for reporting.
Another point to note is that gamers under the age of 18 will not be able to turn off the Voice Reporting feature, which will remain on until Fortnite is closed. Gamers will, however, be able to turn off the voice chat completely and mute themselves as well.
The accurate attribution of voice recordings to the right players is a big move towards ensuring the culprits are rightfully reported and clear audio evidence is submitted to Epic Games. This should also hopefully reduce the number of trolls who bully teenagers in the game.
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