A tweet caught our eye when someone mentioned Riot games rolled out PATCH 11.21 as matchmaking updates as an experiment to test out if player interactions get more positive in-game.
League of Legends developer/publisher company RIOT Games, announced on their official website the possibility of a feature removed from League of Legends client after Update 11.21. As RIOT game devs put it in the patch news, “The negative interactions outweighing the positives.“, caused them to take this executive decision.
Riot Games has decided to disable all chat in match making for League of Legends
This is due to what they say is the negative interactions outweighing the positives. pic.twitter.com/rlEW5xx96K
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) October 12, 2021
RIOT games have decided to Disable All-Chat features from the game client in all matchmaking queues(ranked and casual). This came after multiple reports from the League of Legends player base about AFK-ing and griefing teammates or outright getting harassed by the enemy team.
Riot reported that reports received in the last year exceeded all prior records and LOL devs looked to change that. I am pretty sure that the RIOT game development team had long boardroom visits away from their usual comfort zone.
When Update11.21 roll in, the Client won’t activate the chat window for all-chat anymore. This trend has been followed in a lot of MOBA games lately. All of them follow the gameplay ideology of the League of Legends.
POKEMON Unite, one of the many MOBA games that launched this autumn on Mobile devices, does not have a dedicated chat window in them at all in matchmaking queues.
Are we gradually going back to the stone age of in-game communications due to community toxicity?
At least team chat is still a feature on our desktop space. But, if the toxicity trend of the gaming community continues, we will be back in the stone age era of in-game communication.
Most games still do have all chat functions. But if someone sets a trend in the gaming industry, dominoes fall in pretty quickly. This is simply because we have a tightly knit community.
We just feel that this is a stark reminder of the fact Gamers really do not own anything in-game and the executives at a particular publishing house/game dev have the Final say.
In hindsight, we could only hope that the experiment does not yield positive results. But, I digress.
We can only pressurize the RIOT games development team to start the All- chat feature again and be nice to one another.
As stated on RiotGames official page:
“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.
We know this sucks for those of you who just want to compliment your lane opponent’s skin or ask for a dance party in Baron pit. But we believe the tradeoff is worth it to cut down on the growing negativity /all chat has been creating in your games.”
