In their official announcement, Riot Games is removing the all-chat feature from League of Legends in its latest patch 11.21 update.
It's officially here. Patch 11.21 has finally arrived and with it, the removal of the /all chat feature in League of Legends, which is bound to create a certain level of controversy. Toxicity in esports, as well as gaming in general, has been a controversial topic for many years now. While toxicity is a natural part of gaming as a whole, many developers and companies are trying their best to curb the high levels you can find in your average matchmaking game.
Riot Games sees itself as one of the pioneers by removing the /all chat feature entirely from its latest patch, which will serve as a test run. While it was originally announced to be removed entirely, Riot has since come out to say that they are rolling it out on selected regions to see how the response will be like. This comes after receiving plenty of feedback from players on the matter, which forced Riot into rethinking their strategy in introducing the removal.
Because of this, they will now be doing it on a two-patch test run. The impact of the change will be evaluated through verbal abuse reports, penalty rates, surveys, as well as direct player feedback. Once the test period is complete, Riot may decide to remove the /all chat feature entirely from the game, make changes to the feature, or even re-introduce it on a per-region basis.
As a whole, removing the /all chat feature from the game can do nothing but good for the community in the long run. Too many a time have we read countless tweets, Reddit threads, and numerous complaints about toxic players that keep spamming in all-chat. While getting rid of toxicity in MOBA is nearly impossible, Riot is taking the first step in trying to curb the issue.
But of course, it does set off a whole different issue. With the /all chat feature already being an optional choice for players to opt-in, removing it entirely just seems excessive. For players who want to manually turn on the /all chat feature, they would probably know what they're getting themselves into in the first place. Many players also feel that they receive more toxic messages from their teammates rather than their opponents.
A quick search on Twitter and you'll find many players voicing their concerns and outrage at Riot's latest attempt in trying to resolve the constant toxicity issue. While they may think that removing the /all chat feature is a step in the right direction, it isn't seen that way in the eyes of the community. There are better ways to handle toxic players within the community than cutting one of the few forms of communication. For instance, introducing a better banning and report system could potentially help to curb the problem that many players face today. The current system that Riot has in place does little to nothing when it comes to penalising actual toxic players.
But if this change has taught Riot anything is that it helps to listen to your community. With the amount of concern that was initially raised by the public on removing all-chat, it was enough to get Riot to go back on their original plan and to introduce it on a per-region basis. It doesn't fix the problem entirely, but it does put things in the right direction, sort of. This way, Riot will be able to see which regions are known to have a high count of toxicity (looking at you, SEA.)
While it remains to be seen if the removal of the /all chat feature will be a big hit amongst the players and the community, the next few weeks will play a crucial part when patch 11.23 drops in a month. By then, Riot may have a definite answer on what they will do with the /all chat feature.
