Has all chat been removed lol?

Riot Games is slightly pulling back on its initial promise to disable /all chat in League of Legends matchmade queues in Patch 11.21. After heavy feedback from the game’s community, Riot will now only be disabling /all chat on a “per-region basis” over the span of the next two League patches.

“Starting this patch, /all chat will be disabled in matchmade queues in a few regions,” Riot said in the patch notes for League Patch 11.21. “Since our original announcement, response has varied between regions, so we’re shifting our approach and only disabling /all chat where players were most receptive to trying it out.”

📒 Patch 11.21 Highlights!

Full patch notes here 👇https://t.co/lvtHmSnpPV pic.twitter.com/BFP33v20qc

— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) October 19, 2021

Riot has not clarified which regions will be affected by the upcoming changes to /all chat. But the developer said the disabling of /all chat on a per-region basis will only be temporary. It will only be unavailable to use during Patches 11.21 and 11.22. 

“In regions where the disable rolls out, /all chat will still be available in custom games, and no other tools are being disabled,” Riot said. “We’ll evaluate the impact of this change through verbal abuse reports, penalty rates, surveys, and direct feedback.”

With Patch 11.21 scheduled to go live tomorrow, the test period for /all chat’s disablement would effectively last four weeks, considering Patch 11.22 will conclude on Nov. 17, according to the official League patch schedule.  

“When the test ends, we may leave /all chat disabled, make changes to the disable, or turn it back on, on a per-region basis,” Riot said. “We may also make adjustments during the test itself based on initial results.”

When Patch 11.21 goes live tomorrow, certain regions will realize that /all chat has been disabled. But still, players will be able to communicate with enemies in-game through emotes and post-match lobbies. /All chat will still be available to use in custom League games.

While most of our focus around behavioral systems in 2021 has been on gameplay-based behaviors like AFKing and inting, we've heard from you that verbal abuse has been a rising problem this year, too. We're working on a number of changes to systemically address this at both the League and Riot levels, but one direct change you'll see soon is that in patch 11.21, we're disabling /all chat in matchmade queues.

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. 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.

/All chat is the only thing being disabled. Enemies will still be able to hear and see your emotes and champ mastery (unless muted), as well as CTRL+1/2/3/4 spam. End of Game chat will still be cross-team. Allies will still be able to coordinate with each other in team chat.

Regarding that last one, we're aware that verbal abuse happens in team chat too, so disabling /all chat won't get rid of abuse altogether. But team chat also plays an important team coordination function, so the potential value it brings is much higher, even if it can also host some negative experiences.

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. But we believe the tradeoff is worth it to cut down on the growing negativity /all chat has been creating in your games.

League of Legends is losing cross-team chat, at least temporarily. Riot is removing the popular all chat feature (also called /all chat) in League’s next patch in hopes of combatting toxicity, the developer announced on Tuesday. The feature will remain disabled for a few patches while Riot tests player responses to its removal.

The League of Legends developer said that all chat is a vehicle for toxic behavior and that it hopes disabling it completely will result in less bad behavior, according to the Riot’s blog post on the change. All chat is turned off by default in League of Legends already, but the new change turns it off for all players — even ones who originally opted in.

All chat is the primary way to interact with enemy teams in League of Legends, outside of gameplay. Teams can interact indirectly, however, using emotes, which are still available in-game.

Reaction to all chat’s removal has been largely negative, with players mentioning all of the weird, positive, and fun bonding experiences they’ve had there with the enemy team. Players are also memorializing phrases like “glhf” (good luck, have fun) and “gg” (good game), which will become useless in League of Legends due to this change.

Riot also said that team chat is a toxic aspect of League of Legends — a lot of players wrote in response to the all chat removal that they find team communications to be worse than all chat. However, Riot said team chat will remain on for team communication and coordination.

Shortly after the announcement and its resoundingly negative response, League of Legends game director Andrei van Roon, the original posts’ author, took to Twitter to clarify a couple of points that the original post didn’t address.

In his tweet, van Roon explains that the change will be implemented for a few patches as a test, then Riot will send out surveys to see how it went. The developer will then determine its next move, which could include disabling the feature, bringing it back unchanged, or even a unique solution for each region — depending on the survey response.

This change is set to go live, at least initially, with League of Legends patch 11.21, scheduled for sometime next week.

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