Gaming accessory company Turtle Beach has filed for a new patent which would allow the implementation of a voice scrambling feature. The feature is intended to allow for private communications between two people within a larger group of players, and functions in a rather interesting way.
For those who may be unaware, Turtle Beach is a gaming peripheral company primarily known for its high-quality headsets. While the company still touts headsets as its chief offering, Turtle Beach has branched into a variety of gaming accessories over the years - including regular mics and a multitude of controllers - like the VelocityOne Flightstick Game Controller, a flight simulator controller.
According to Turtle Beach's patent filing for its voice-scrambling headset, the outgoing audio from the player would still be audible to the rest of the players within the group, but would sound entirely indecipherable due to the scrambling. Assumedly sounding a bit like one of Star Wars: Rogue One's Death Troopers, the only way another player could unscramble the audio is if they have the specific key code intended for that player. The patent also states the headset would be able to select a scrambling key based off the identified role of players on a team, like in online lobbies.
Turtle Beach's patent does also mention the headset would have both a scrambling and non-scrambling mode, allowing it to function as a normal communicator. While the patent does seem to be a fairly novel idea, Turtle Beach isn't the only company attempting to attain more secretive methods of communication. Sony patented a system for facilitating secret communications between players, albeit in what sounds like a much different method. Sony's system gathers data on gestures made between two groups of players and the response from the other players using a camera, and then uses AI to make statistical suggestions.
While these new secret communication technologies will surely allow players to exhibit more secretive and sneaky behavior in competitive games, another patent intends to ensure it can't be used to temporarily team up. Around the same time as the Sony patent above, EA filed a controversial patent that bans players for teaming up with enemies. Put simply, the system would automatically detect if players across opposing teams are colluding, and boot them from the game.
It is currently unclear whether Turtle Beach intends to implement its potential new voice scrambling feature within specific devices like the Stealth 600 Gen 2 Gaming Headset or across its entire product line, but it should certainly be interesting to potentially hear some scrambled voice audio in future lobbies. It's also worth pointing out that companies file patents they don't use in consumer products all the time, so it's possible the same will be true in this case.
