If you’re a gamer, you obviously know how important it is to communicate with your team members in order to have a successful game. While most games these days allow players to communicate with each other using some sort of in-game voice comm solution, they are usually not very great. So, if you’re looking for some great chat apps that will allow you to chat with your teammates, and other players in your group, here are the 6 best voice chat apps for gamers:
1. Discord
Discord is a free chat service that allows players to chat with other members in their Discord group, through voice, or even text chat. Players can make a list of friends, to quickly be able to contact them, whenever they need to. The service can be used directly on the web, or players can download the app. Since it is available as a web service, players can quickly join servers, and begin communicating. Personally, I’ve used Discord quite a bit while playing CS:GO, and sometimes even Fortnite, and most of the gamers here at Beebom depend on Discord to communicate during their PUBG matches.
Feature-wise, Discord offers a lot. Players can create custom hotkeys, and use Discord as an in-game overlay. The overlay feature is pretty useful, because it allows players to have a seamless interaction with both the game that they are playing, as well as all of the people they are communicating with, using Discord. The service also allows players to set individual volume levels for other players, so it’s easy to increase the volume for people you want to listen to, and decrease it for others. Couple that with the low resource, and bandwidth usage of Discord, and you easily have a winner. Apart from that, Discord also offers IP, and DDoS protection, so you don’t need to worry about anyone DDoSing your server. Even though Discord is one of the best voice chat apps for gamers but if you don’t want to go with Discord, here are some viable Discord alternatives that you can check out.
Pros:
- Free to use
- built-in DDoS protection
- Nifty tweaks like individual volume levels for players
Cons:
- No self-hosted servers
- Default codec might not be the best of the lot
Download (Available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and web)
2. Overtone
Overtone is another great voice chat app for gamers which you can use to connect with your friends while playing games. The app is simple to use and it’s based on Vivox, one of the best integrated voice chat service that is used by popular games like Fortnite, PUBG, League of Legends, etc. Overtone aims to bring this exclusive technology to gamers around the world, making it a great alternative for Discord.
The lightweight Overtone app doesn’t use a ton of your system resources and it’s quite easy to set up when compared to Discord. It’s absolutely free to use and includes most of the necessary voice and text chat features that you’d expect from an app like this. On top of that, Overtone also includes a couple of social features that will allow you to connect with people who have similar interests as you and discover teams that are playing the same game. You can also run Overtone on a web browser, which is always an added benefit.
Pros:
- Lightweight and easy to set up
- Comes with social features to discover new players and teams
- Uses Vivox voice service, which is one of the best ones out there
Cons:
- Can’t create teams in the web-app
Download (Available for Windows and web)
3. TeamSpeak 3
Another option you can look at, for your in-game chat needs is TeamSpeak. It uses the Opus codec (also used by Discord), for voice chat, and achieves some really low latency times with it. For admins, TeamSpeak offers a lot of permissions that they can use to control, and manage their servers. This is in contrast to Discord, which offers a significantly lesser number of these, in order to keep the app simple, and easy to use.
TeamSpeak supports AES encryption, which can be enabled by the admin. This ensures that all communication inside the server is encrypted, and can’t be accessed by anyone other than the users in the server. The cool thing about this is that encryption can be enabled server-wide, but it can also be enabled for specific conversations. TeamSpeak also offers a lot of customization options for servers, including themes, sound packs, designs, and much more. While Discord is perfect for a smaller team of players, TeamSpeak is exceptionally good at handling servers with a larger number of people, so if you’re more into playing games like League of Legends where you have a larger group of team-mates, you should check out TeamSpeak.
Pros:
- comes with voice-activation detection for push to talk
- Encryption support
- A lot of admin options
Cons:
- UI feels outdated
- No video communication
Download (Available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS)
4. Mumble
Mumble is a VoIP application that comes with encryption always enabled. This is good, because it means that your data is always secure on the servers. Mumble supports low latency audio streaming, so you will experience minimum lags while chatting with your friends. It also supports positional sound, which gives the game you’re playing a much more realistic, and immersive feel.
Mumble gives the server admins a plethora of user permissions, which they can use to manage, and control the users on the server, and almost every aspect of it. It also comes with an in-game overlay, like the others in this list, which can be very useful as well. Apart from the features that Mumble already offers, players can use “Ice” middleware, to get additional features in their Mumble server, such as web interfaces, channel viewers, authenticators, and many more. Mumble also has mobile applications that have been developed by third party developers.
Pros:
- Supports positional audio
- Open-source
- Encryption support
Cons:
- Can be a little difficult to set up
- Audio quality isn’t the best
Download (Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS)
5. SteamChat
SteamChat is another great option that you can rely on for all your voice comm needs while playing a game. Since most of you might already have Steam installed on your system and running in the background while you’re playing a game, it’s a great option you can try out before installing any of the other apps on this list. After all, if you’re playing PUBG PC, why launch a separate chat client, when Steam supports the feature itself, right? Steam’s chat feature is free to use and allows you to create your own groups with friends.
SteamChat also allows users to share unique URLs which you can click on and instantly join a pre-made group. Chat administrators also get the privilege to set roles for members, giving them the ability to kick other members, manage group information and set chat restrictions. Furthermore, SteamChat also has a web client, which you can use if you don’t already have Steam installed on your system.
Pros:
- Supports grouping friends by games
- Has a web-client
Cons:
- Voice quality isn’t on par with options like Overtone
Download (Available on Windows, macOS and Linux)
6. RaidCall
Raidcall is a free VoIP service that you can consider for using as your in-game chat app. One of the great things about this service, is that is really light on system resources. You can run this app, and you wouldn’t notice much of a difference in the performance of your system while gaming. However, the biggest feature of this service, is that it can support up to 100k users in the same Raidcall group. Raidcall is widely used by players of games like Dota, so if that’s the game you’re into, maybe give RaidCall a try before other apps on this list.
The sound quality is good, and it also comes with additional features, such as voice recording, noise reduction, poll, announcements, and a lot more. Users can use Raidcall to transfer files, keep chat records, share YouTube videos, etc. Raidcall servers support themes, and emoticons for customization. Also, if you’re streaming a Twitch video, you can still use Raidcall to chat at the same time.
Pros:
- Very light on resources
- Supports up to 100k users in the same group
- Great for Twitch streamers
Cons:
- UI isn’t the best
- Doesn’t support individual volume adjustments for players
Download (Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS)
SEE ALSO: 8 Best Discord Music Bots You Can Use
Use these Voice Chat Apps to Communicate with Your Clan
Proper team communication is an important part of winning any co-op multiplayer game, and these VoIP apps and services will definitely help you communicate with your clan more effectively. If you’re still using Skype, you should definitely check these out for your gaming needs.
So, what chat applications do you use for communicating with your team? And what games do you guys play? Also, if you know of any other great voice communication apps meant for gamers, do let us know about them in the comments section below.
from Beebom https://beebom.com/best-voice-chat-apps-services/
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