League of Legends is temporarily losing cross-team chat. On Tuesday, Riot Games announced that it's removing the chat feature (also known as /all chat) in the next League patch in the the hopes of fighting toxicity. As the developer tests responses to its removal, the feature will remain disabled for a few patches.
Riot explained that all chat is a vehicle for bad behavior, and according to its blog post on the change, it hopes disabling it completely will result in less toxic behavior. All chat is already turned off by default in League of Legends, but the new change will completely disable the feature for all players. Riot noted that other communication methods including normal team chat will remain unchanged while /all chat is disabled.
In League of Legends, all chat is the primary way to interact with enemy teams outside of gameplay, but teams can interact directly in the game using emotes.
While the /all chat feature has positive uses such as complimenting a player's skills and in-game cosmetics, the feature is mostly used to trash-talk opponents. It's clear that the feature is being used for negative reasons more than positive ones, but Riot acknowledged the positives and said it will measure the impact of this change to see what the future holds for this social feature.
"While /all chat can be the source of fun social interaction between teams, as well as some good-hearted banter, right now negative interactions outweigh the positives," Riot explained in the post. "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."
Reaction to the removal of the all chat has been largely negative, with players mentioning all the positive experiences they've had with the enemy team. Phrases like "gg" (good game) and "glhf" (good luck, have fun) will be missed while the /all chat feature is gone.
Shortly after Riot announced the change, League of Legends game director Andrei van Roon, the author of the original posts, took to Twitter to explain a couple of points that the original post didn't address.
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Van Roon clarified that the change will be implemented for a few patches as a test, then Riot will send out surveys to gather feedback. Riot Games will ten determine its next move depending on the results of the survey.
The change is set to go live with League of Legends patch 11.21, scheduled for sometime next week.
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