League of Legends has had a reputation for, frankly, having an awful community for a long time, and developer Riot Games is disabling certain chat features because of how toxic it can get.
If you’re not familiar with /all chat from League of Legends, it lets players from both teams talk to each other as they play. As you might’ve already guessed, it can get ugly fast. So much so that as of patch 11.21, /all chat will no longer be part of games in matchmade queues.
It’s a feature that’s been part of League of Legends for years, so Riot made a statement as to why /all chat is getting the boot.
“While /all chat can be the source of fun social interaction between teams as well as some good-hearted banter,” Riot Games said on the League of Legends website. “Right now, negative interactions outweigh the positives. We’ll evaluate the impact of this change through verbal abuse reports and penalty rates, as well as surveys and direct feedback from you all.”
In patch 11.21, we're disabling /all chat in matchmade queues!
Read more here: https://t.co/yWr3elxB6g
pic.twitter.com/yEpxFCEPzC
— League of Legends // UK, IE & Nordics (@LoLUKN) October 12, 2021
Riot Games clarified that teams can still talk to each other at the end of a match. Besides that, though, you won’t have to worry about the people shouting obscenities in capital letters as much.
“We know this sucks for those of you who just want to compliment your lane opponent’s skin or ask for a dance party in Baron pit,” Riot Games said later in the statement. “But we believe the tradeoff is worth it to cut down on the growing negativity /all chat has been creating in your games.”
Andrei van Roon, game director on League of Legends, stated that removing /all chat is only a test for now. Depending on feedback, Riot Games may or may not reverse the change.
TLDR – trying a test where we turn off All Chat (team chat still exists of course). Test is driven by rate of negative interactions versus positive
Will see what people think of the experience with it off, assess whether to keep it off or re-enable. https://t.co/Ugru2ClBdV
— Andrei van Roon (@RiotMeddler) October 12, 2021
It’ll be interesting to see how much this cuts down on harassment and abuse in League of Legends, if it does at all.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
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