How Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Players Play ARC Raiders, Valorant and League of Legends

Ask any competitive player what wins fights and you’ll hear the same answer: information. In most modern games, a huge share of that information arrives through your ears. For deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) players, that means building a different playbook.

ARC Raiders: survival by sight

ARC Raiders is an extraction shooter where sound tells you everything: the whir of an ARC drone, footsteps in the next room, a stranger on proximity chat deciding whether to team up or shoot. DHH players lean on constant visual scanning, slower and more deliberate movement, and squads that agree on pings before the raid starts. The hardest part is proximity voice. If another raider says “friendly, don’t shoot” and you can’t hear it, a peaceful encounter becomes a firefight.

Valorant: footsteps and callouts

In Valorant, audio is a weapon. Footsteps, reloads and ability cues reveal positions before anyone peeks. DHH players compensate with crosshair discipline, minimap awareness and heavy use of pings. But voice comms like “two B main, one lurking mid” move faster than text chat ever will.

League of Legends: map awareness as a superpower

League is the most accessible of the three because so much of it is visual. Many DHH players become exceptional at reading the minimap and tracking timers. Still, voice calls in premade groups can leave them a beat behind on dives, objectives and rotations.

Where captions help

Real-time captions turn voice chat into text on screen: teammate callouts, proximity conversations and strategy calls, the moment they’re spoken. DHH players stay in the loop with their squad instead of guessing or asking teammates to type.

The risk of missing your surroundings

Not hearing your environment is more than a competitive disadvantage. It means getting ambushed without warning, missing a teammate’s call for help, mistaking a friendly player for a threat, and slowly getting left out of team play. Over time, that isolation pushes players away from the games they love.

Captions don’t replace good game design. Developers still need visual sound indicators and strong ping systems. But captions close a gap that has been open for far too long, and that’s exactly why we’re building CaptionsRush.