Riot has decided to ban /All Chat in the upcoming LoL Patch 11.21 to battle toxicity. Is this the right move?
Riot Games just had another great idea to remove toxicity from League of Legends – removing /All Chat completely for a patch. Apparently, it isn’t your own teammates flaming you that ruin the experience, but the opposing mid laner writing ‘EZ’ when they get a quadra kill.
In the upcoming LoL Patch 11.21 /All Chat is going to be disabled in matchmade queues and Riot will monitor whether toxicity in-game is going to go down. In a statement Game Director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon and Lead Gameplay Producer Jeremy “Riot Brightmoon” Lee explained:
/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.
So even though you might not be able to talk in /All Chat during the game, once the game ends and you’re in the lobby the flaming can begin all over again. Is this really the way to go?
- More news on what is happening in Patch 11.21 right here at EarlyGame.
In a now-deleted Tweet another Riot employee spoke out against the decision by the behavioral team on disabling /All Chat. Riot Earthslug stated that “the % of games I enjoy /all outweighs the bad. I'm sad for this."
In patch 11.21, we're disabling /all chat in matchmade queues! Read more here: https://t.co/yWr3elxB6g pic.twitter.com/yEpxFCEPzC
— League of Legends // UK, IE & Nordics (@LoLUKN) October 12, 2021
How Has the Community Reacted to the Removal of /All Chat?
The community is rather critical of the decision – as one can tell by the 30K upvotes on reddit, stating that this seems like a mere attempt for Riot to look like they’re trying to combat toxicity instead of making real changes. Some believe that bettering the honor system with better rewards would entice players to be less toxic in-game.
Players who don’t want to see or interact with /All Chat already have the option of disabling the chat in their settings anyways, which means that anyone who doesn’t want to interact with the enemy team already has this alternative at their hands. Therefore, the decision to permanently remove /All Chat is rather confusing for many.
/All Chat to Only be Disabled in Some Regions
In the patch notes for LoL Patch 11.21, Riot did write that the reaction to disabling /all has differed from region to region. Therefore, Riot is shifting their approach and only disabling /all chat where players were most receptive to trying it out.
In the patch notes, it is also stated that the test of removing /all chat completely will be going for LoL Patch 11.21 and LoL Patch 11.22.
Is disabling /all the right decision to combat toxicity in League of Legends? Let us know on Discord – where you can chat will all!