Hearing a random russian in voice chat in my private server

It's neither of that, but likely a case of the Voice.eco config file containing the same voice channel id for your game and the game of the other person. Please feel free to send us your /Steam/steamapps/common/Eco/Eco_Data/Configs/Voice.eco to [email protected] so we can check why that is and then delete it, which should resolve the issue.

The channel id is generated on the first start of a local world and kept as long as the game isn't completely removed. It should never be equal to the one of someone else if files weren't copied around, which sometimes happens by accident when people copy or share files, for example for setting up multiple servers or helping each other with an issue. It can also happen with server hosts that provision servers by using a template where they forgot to remove the channel id and as such have the same channel id for multiple servers.

That's why I asked for the file to be sent to my colleagues for further investigation, as I can't tell you why you would have the same ID. As long as there is no other player visible that you don't recognize in the "O" list, there is noone else on your world and that's the only reason that makes sense.

The voice chat is area based, so someone must have both the same channel id and be at the same coordinates in their world. You can turn off the voice chat in the ESC menu, if you prefer.