Frequently Asked Questions

GameVox is a voice and text chat platform built for gaming communities. It offers voice chat, video, screen sharing, spatial audio, soundboard, and more. No email required to get started.

GameVox is built by LightSpeed Gaming LLC, registered in Ohio, USA. We've been hosting voice communication for gamers for well over a decade. You can learn more on our About page.

Yes. The Standard tier is free and includes voice chat, text chat, file sharing, and all core features. Paid tiers (Silver, Gold, Diamond) unlock higher limits, better audio, and advanced features like raid protection and automated moderation. See Pricing for details.

GameVox is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and as a web app in your browser. All platforms support voice chat, text chat, and core features.

GameVox for Android is available now via Obtainium, which gives you automatic updates straight from our public releases page. Google Play Store availability is coming soon.

Your server, your rules. We don't police what communities share. NSFW, anime, creative content, whatever your community is into.

No. You can create an account with just a username and password. Email and phone are optional; you only add them if you want account recovery or verification.

No. We don't sell data, mine your conversations, or show advertisements. Revenue comes from paid tiers, not your personal information. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

You're right that closed source requires trust. So does every game you're playing right now. What we can point to: no investors, no board, no ad revenue, no data sales. Self-funded, built on server subscriptions. There's no financial incentive to harvest data and no third party to hand it to. Our Privacy Policy is public, and if you want maximum control, self-hosting keeps your community's data on your own hardware.

Ohio's age verification law (HB 96, effective September 2025) applies to websites whose primary business is distributing content that is obscene or harmful to juveniles; essentially pornography sites. It does not apply to general communication platforms.

GameVox is a voice and text chat platform, not an adult content distribution service. Users may share whatever they want within their own servers, but that's user-generated content in private communities, not the platform's primary purpose. This is the same legal position as Discord, TeamSpeak, or any other communication platform.

We keep an eye on evolving legislation and will adapt if laws change to affect communication platforms more broadly.

Our API and database run on AWS in the US (US-East). Voice servers are multi-region with nodes in the United States, France, Australia, and Russia, with more regions planned. We're not locked into any single provider and we're open to expanding as the platform grows.

Yes. Each server has its own channels, permissions, roles, and settings, fully isolated from one another. Members of one server cannot see or access another server's data unless they are also a member of that server.

Not currently. All data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest (AWS server-side encryption), which is the same standard most communication platforms use. We're considering end-to-end encryption for the future.

Server owners have full control over moderation. Nothing is hard-enabled by the platform; you configure what works for your community. Built-in tools include:

• Roles & Permissions: granular per-channel and per-role permission overrides
• Kick & Ban: with optional ban expiry and reason logging
• Audit Log: tracks all admin actions for accountability
• AutoMod: configurable automated moderation (see below)

AutoMod is a configurable rule-based system. Server owners choose which rules to enable and how they behave. Available rules:

• Keyword Filter: block messages containing specific words or phrases, with whole-word matching
• Link Filter: block all links, or allow/deny specific domains
• Mention Spam: limit the number of mentions per message
• Caps Filter: prevent excessive capital letters
• Toxicity Detection Gold+: automated detection of toxic content with l33tspeak normalization
• Regex Patterns Gold+: custom pattern matching for advanced filtering

Each rule can be configured to block the message silently, warn the user, alert moderators, or apply a progressive timeout (5 min, 1 hour, 24 hours). You can exempt specific roles or channels from any rule.

Yes. Gold+ Raid detection monitors join patterns and triggers a lockdown when a threshold is exceeded (e.g., 10 joins in 30 seconds). During lockdown, new joins are temporarily blocked and moderators are alerted. You can lift the lockdown manually at any time.

Yes, on all tiers. The platform enforces message rate limiting, duplicate message detection, and message length limits. This runs alongside any AutoMod rules you configure.

All tiers include unlimited streaming hours. Higher tiers unlock higher resolutions and frame rates:

Voice bitrate determines the clarity and richness of voice audio. Higher bitrates mean better fidelity:

Self-hosted servers get Diamond-equivalent streaming quality (1440p 60fps screen share, 1440p camera) with no voice bitrate cap. Since you're hosting the voice traffic on your own hardware, there's no bandwidth limit imposed by us.

A self-hosted server lets you run GameVox on your own hardware. Voice chat, text messages, file shares, emojis, soundboard clips, polls, events, and all community content is stored and processed locally on your machine instead of our cloud.

User accounts and authentication are still managed by GameVox cloud. Your users log in with their existing GameVox accounts and can move between cloud and self-hosted servers.

Stored on your server:

• Text and voice channels, categories, and channel settings
• All chat messages, edits, and deletions
• Permissions, groups, and roles
• Custom emojis and soundboard clips
• File shares and uploaded files
• Polls, events, announcements, and activity logs
• AutoMod configuration
• Voice sessions (processed locally, not routed through our servers)

Stored on GameVox cloud:

• User accounts and authentication (login, profiles, avatars)
• Subscription and billing information
• Server banner image
• Server access settings (public/private, invite links)
• Server rules

Self-hosted servers get Diamond-tier features. Since you're hosting your own data and voice streams, we don't pay for the bandwidth and storage costs that come with higher tiers. That means you get the full feature set:

• Up to 64 text and voice channels
• 256 kbps voice bitrate
• Up to 100 voice users per channel
• Unlimited custom emojis (including animated)
• Unlimited members
• Advanced AutoMod (toxicity detection, regex patterns)
• Raid protection
• Full audit log retention (360 days)

Storage limits depend on your own hardware; you're not constrained by our cloud storage quotas.

Free forever if you create your self-hosted server before July 1, 2026. After that date, it's $2/month or $15/year. This is a separate offering and is not included with any other subscription tier.

You need a machine (physical or virtual) that can stay online, and two open ports: one for WebSocket (TCP 8088) and one for voice (UDP 7070). The self-hosted binary handles everything else. No database setup, no web server configuration. Updates are applied automatically. See the Self-Hosted Guide for setup instructions.

No. Authentication goes through GameVox cloud, so users need our service to be online to log in and connect. If our cloud is unreachable, users won't be able to join any server, including self-hosted ones.

Because user accounts are managed by GameVox cloud, a shutdown would mean users can no longer authenticate. Your server data (messages, files, emojis, etc.) would still exist on your hardware, but the server wouldn't be usable without the cloud authentication layer.

Not currently, but it is planned. The database is a local SQLite file on your server. If someone gains access to your machine, they could read the database directly. We recommend standard security practices: firewall, strong passwords, restricted access.

With self-hosting, most of your community data never touches our servers; it stays on your hardware. For the data that does go through our cloud (user accounts, server metadata), we don't sell data, mine conversations, or serve ads.

You can reach us directly through the platform or via our support channels. We're a small team, which means you talk to actual developers, not a bot or a ticketing queue.

Yes. GameVox is in open beta and used by communities daily. We ship updates frequently and respond to issues quickly. The "beta" label means we're still adding features, not that the platform is unreliable.