League of Legends Disabling /All Chat In Patch 11.21 to Combat Toxicity

October 12, 2021 Omer Altay Comments

Riot Games announced today that in they'll be disabling the /all chat system (cross-team chat) in League of Legends in the game's next patch (Patch 11.21). The logic behind the controversial move is to combat toxicity and verbal abuse. Emotes and champion mastery pings will still be visible by opponents.

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.

While /All Chat was already disabled by default it could always be turned on but its now being removed entirely with 11.21.

While this move is definitely controversial, its not all that surprising given where the industry has been going over the years. For better or worse, the era of a totally unfiltered and free internet is long gone and games like Overwatch and League of Legends have led the way in cracking down on toxicity and poor sportsmanship.

As a long time League of Legends player I'm disappointed with this change. While there's definitely some toxicity in All Chat its mostly just juvenile trash talking or silly banter. Besides, I'm also not quite sure who Riot Games is trying to protect here. The game already disables /All Chat by default, so anyone going out of their way to turn it on should know what they're getting themselves into.

While I definitely don't speak for everyone, I'm tired of gaming companies catering to the most sensitive players. Every game, League of Legends included, already has built in tools to mute and block players, so taking away a fun social component from the game to protect the feelings of a tiny minority of sensitive players seems dumb to me. I definitely see myself playing less League of Legends going forward and I can't be the only one. How does everyone else feel about this?

Source: Official Announcement