To curb verbal abuse in League of Legends, “/all chat” will be disabled from patch 11.21

In-game toxicity and verbal abuse have been an ever-growing concern in League of Legends since season one.

Even with all the strict rules in place, and the reporting system, the issue did not die down even a bit, and things are just getting out of control with more players joining the MOBA.

With patch 11.21, the League of Legends developers will try a drastic experiment to help solve the issue once and for all.

In a recent tweet, Riot Games opened up about how from the next patch update, they will be temporarily disabling the “/all chat” feature in the game.

In the tweet, Andre van Roon writes,

“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.”

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League of Legends patch 11.21 will be disabling the in-game “/all chat” feature

With the temporary “/all chat” restriction, Riot Games will be looking to lower the number of negative interactions that people have in a League of Legends match-made queue, may it be in normals, ARAM, URF, or even ranked.

The League of Legends developers state in the blog that,

“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.”

However, Riot realises that just disabling “all/ chat” will not completely negate verbal abuse in League of Legends. Team chat is also something that is in their minds when making this decision, and Riot states that,

“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.”

The step Riot is looking to take is quite drastic. However, it’s temporary, and the developers are just looking to see just how much negative they can keep in check by bringing this change.