After countless reports of verbal abuse via cross-team chat, League of Legends has decided to disable the /all chat function.
Riot Games, developers of the wildly popular and critically acclaimed MOBA League of Legends, has finally heard the prayers of endless players. As of patch 11.21, the /all chat function will no longer be available in matchmade queues specifically. Hallelujah.
On the game’s website, the developers wrote that they’ve “heard from [us] that verbal abuse has been a rising problem”. Yeah, no shit – people have been complaining about the toxicity of MOBAs for years now. League especially, but that changes at least in part once 11.21 releases.
Sure, some folks don’t care so much about a random person cussing them out and taunting them in a video game. Others certainly do. We’re not all impervious to a snarky comment, or getting a little heated in the moment and snapping back when we’re frustrated. Despite claiming some thick skin myself, there are definitely days where I take these sorts of things to heart when I really shouldn’t. We’re all human after all.
But that problem’s actually being addressed by League now, and it’s great to see. Riot’s focus has moved from AFKing and inting (aka dying intentionally), to the verbal abuse players experience.
The decision means they’re “disabling /all chat in matchmade queues”, which means enemies can still “hear and see your emotes and champ mastery (unless muted), as well as CTRL+1/2/3/4 spam” and that the End of Game chat will still be cross-team.
That doesn’t mean that all banter has to stop entirely, of course. You can still laugh with your teammates and more importantly, coordinate tactics. You just can’t accidentally tell the other team what your plans are anymore.
On the note of abuse and team chat, League of Legends acknowledged that it can still happen in your team too, but that “the potential value it brings is much higher” than /all chat. They’re not wrong either, considering more often than not, interactions between players can devolve pretty quickly in any game.
Even Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm has some toxic team players ready to flame you for the smallest slip-up, and Heroes doesn’t even have an /all chat.
Riot also promises to “evaluate the impact of this change through verbal abuse reports and penalty rates, as well as surveys and direct feedback”. Which sounds like a pretty fair decision to me. If people enough people want /all chat back, their voices will be heard. Personally? I might actually start playing League of Legends now.
On top of this small but welcome change, League of Legends is set to launch its animated series Arcane on November 6th through Netflix.
