Riot completely disables general chat in ranked and casual games in LoL. It is official
This is really happening. Riot disables general chat in Matchmaking.
Hardly anyone believed in the reports of changes in the way players communicate in LoL. It has been unofficially talked about for a long time and finally, there is official information directly from Riot. Indeed, a decision that will strongly affect LoL has been made.
Officially, General Matchmaking Chat will be disabled from Update 11.21. What does it mean? Chat will not be able to be used in raking games as well as in regular games.
The chat turned off for good
This information is official, you can read the full text below. The text is straight from Riot and has not been modified in any way. This is another thing that has been proven that many people have doubted.
In patch 11.21, we’re disabling /all chat in matchmade queues.
While most of our focus around behavioral systems in 2021 has been on gameplay-based behaviors like AFKing and inting, we’ve heard from you that verbal abuse has been a rising problem this year, too. We’re working on a number of changes to systemically address this at both the League and Riot levels, but one direct change you’ll see soon is that in patch 11.21, we’re disabling /all chat in matchmade queues.
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.
/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.
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.
This message is really controversial and now you can safely write that there will be a lot of praise, but also a lot of complaints. Riot has withdrawn more than once from ideas that strongly influenced LoL. How will it be in this case? It remains to be seen for some time.