Toxic players are rampant in all online games. In an effort to improve the gameplay experience for the players, Riot Games has taken a bold step, to turn off All Chat in LoL.

Riot Games has announced the removal of all chat functions in League of Legends in order to reduce player toxicity. League of Legends, which was released in 2009 and is now one of Riot Games’ most popular games, has set a goal for 2021 to introduce measures to address toxicity and poor behaviour in the free-to-play MOBA.

What is All Chat?

Since the beginning of League of Legends, all chat, or the ability to interact with players on the other team, has existed. While Riot used to turn off all chat by default, users could still put it back on via the in-game options. That will no longer be the case with the upcoming update, and gamers will be unable to opt-in at all. In reality, outside of emotes and action orders, there will be no ability to communicate with the other team in match-made games until the post-game lobby.

League of Legends AFK Punishment

League of Legends developers released significant improvements to the game’s penalty mechanism for AFK players and those who exit matches on purpose earlier in September. While the game had previously had systems in place to penalise AFK players by delaying their ability to find matches, a review by Riot’s behaviour systems team discovered that just 9% of offenders were affected. As a result of these findings, stronger penalties for AFK League of Legends players have been imposed, with offenders facing varying levels of punishment, including queue penalties of up to 15 minutes and game lockouts of up to 14 days.

Reasoning to Turn Off All Chat in LoL

Many players will not notice a difference in the way they play the game as a result of these adjustments. Since Riot added the ability to turn off all chat manually, many players have chosen to do so. Others will notice a huge change in the social element of League of Legends.

According to a developer blog post released by Riot Games, they have said this in regard to their decision

“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.”

This bold step taken by Riot Games to turn off the All Chat function in LoL will be a game changer. It will be interesting to see if this really affects the toxic behaviour of the community. 

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