Everything you need to know about GameVox.
GameVox is a voice and text chat platform built specifically for gaming communities. It offers crystal clear voice chat, video, screen sharing, spatial audio, soundboard, and more - with no email required to get started.
GameVox is built by LightSpeed Gaming LLC, registered in Ohio, USA. We've been hosting voice communication platforms for gamers for over a 20 years. You can learn more on our About page.
Yes. The Standard tier is completely free and includes voice chat, text chat, file sharing, and all core features. Paid tiers (Silver, Gold, Diamond) unlock higher limits, HD audio, and advanced features like raid protection and AI-powered 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.
All content is accepted. We don't police what communities share - your server, your rules. We're not in the business of deciding what's appropriate for your community. 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 features.
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 are open to expanding to additional non-US hosting as the platform grows.
Yes. Each community ("server") has its own channels, permissions, roles, and settings - fully isolated at the application level. 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 used by most communication platforms. End-to-end encryption is something we're considering 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:
AutoMod is a configurable rule-based system. Server owners choose which rules to enable and how they behave. Available rules:
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+ Automatic raid detection monitors join patterns and triggers a lockdown when a configurable 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 automatically 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:
| Preset | Resolution | Frame Rate | Max Bitrate | Min Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 720p | 1280 × 720 | 24 fps | 2.5 Mbps | Standard |
| 1080p | 1920 × 1080 | 24 fps | 4.5 Mbps | Standard |
| 1080p+ | 1920 × 1080 | 24 fps | 8 Mbps | Gold+ |
| 1080p 60fps | 1920 × 1080 | 60 fps | 8 Mbps | Gold+ |
| 1080p+ 60fps | 1920 × 1080 | 60 fps | 12 Mbps | Gold+ |
| 1440p 60fps | 2560 × 1440 | 60 fps | 12 Mbps | Diamond+ |
| 1440p+ 60fps | 2560 × 1440 | 60 fps | 20 Mbps | Diamond+ |
| Preset | Resolution | Frame Rate | Max Bitrate | Min Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 480p | 640 × 480 | 30 fps | 800 kbps | Standard |
| 720p | 1280 × 720 | 30 fps | 1.5 Mbps | Standard |
| 720p+ | 1280 × 720 | 30 fps | 2.5 Mbps | Silver+ |
| 1080p | 1920 × 1080 | 30 fps | 3 Mbps | Gold+ |
| 1080p+ | 1920 × 1080 | 30 fps | 8 Mbps | Gold+ |
| 1440p | 2560 × 1440 | 30 fps | 6 Mbps | Diamond+ |
| 1440p+ | 2560 × 1440 | 30 fps | 10 Mbps | Diamond+ |
Voice bitrate determines the clarity and richness of voice audio. Higher bitrates mean better fidelity:
| Tier | Max Voice Bitrate |
|---|---|
| Standard | 64 kbps |
| Silver | 64 kbps |
| Gold | 128 kbps |
| Diamond | 256 kbps |
| Self-Hosted | Unlimited |
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 - not on our cloud infrastructure.
User accounts and authentication are still managed by GameVox cloud. This means your users log in with their existing GameVox accounts and can seamlessly move between cloud and self-hosted servers.
Stored on your server:
Stored on GameVox cloud:
Self-hosted servers get Diamond-tier features. Since you're hosting your own data and voice streams, we don't have to pay for the bandwidth and storage costs that normally come with higher tiers. That means you get the full feature set:
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) connections 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 step-by-step setup instructions.
No. User authentication goes through GameVox cloud, so users need our service to be online in order to log in and connect. If our cloud is unreachable, users won't be able to join any server - including self-hosted ones. There is no way around this given the complexity of multi-region authentication and account management.
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 database encryption is planned for the future. 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 securing your server with standard best practices (firewall, strong passwords, restricted access).
With self-hosting, most of your community data never touches our servers at all - it stays on your hardware. For the data that does go through our cloud (user accounts, server metadata), our reputation depends on handling it responsibly. 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 actively 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.