Been thinking about this after messing with BF6's voice settings for an hour. Half the threads I found weren't even people fixing their mic — they were just people going "lol nobody uses in-game VC anyway." One dude said 15 years ago you'd hop into a squad and there'd be constant comms, and now everyone just sits silent in their own Discord.
So real question: should devs even bother putting engineering time into in-game VOIP anymore?
Both sides kinda make sense:
"Let it die" camp: Like 95% of solo players never touch their mic. Discord's got lower latency, better quality, and your friends are already there. Every hour a dev spends on in-game voice is an hour NOT spent on anti-cheat or netcode. And let's be real, random squad comms are usually just some kid screaming or full-on toxic anyway.
"Keep it" camp: Discord only works if you already HAVE a friend group. For a new player solo queuing, in-game voice is the only door into actually talking to people. If VOIP dies, games just get lonelier and more clique-y — you only ever play with people you already know. And in team games like R6 or Ready or Not, the whole thing falls apart without comms.
Where do you land? Is proximity/squad VC worth saving or is it a relic at this point?