Riot Games once again had a great idea to curb toxic behavior in League of Legends – namely to completely remove the /All chat for a patch. Apparently, it’s not your own teammates who ruin the game experience by flaming, but the opposing mid laner who writes “EZ” after a Quadra Kill.

With the upcoming LoL Patch 11.21, /All Chat will be disabled in all matchmade queues. During this time, Riot will monitor whether or not in-game toxicity decreases. In a statement, Game Director Andrei “Meddler” van Roon and Lead Gameplay Producer Jeremy “Riot Brightmoon” Lee explained the restrictions:

The /All Chat is the only feature that will be disabled. Opponents will still see and hear your stickers and Champion Championship emotes, as well as your CTRL+1/2/3/4 spam (unless they’ve muted it). Game summary chat will also continue to be cross-team. In addition, allies will still use the team chat for coordination.

So even if you can’t talk via /All chat during the game – as soon as the game ends and everyone is in the lobby the flaming will start all over again. Is this really the right way to go?

In a now-deleted tweet, another Riot employee spoke out against the behavior team’s decision to disable /All Chat. Riot Earthslug pointed out that “the percentage of games where I enjoy /All outweighs the bad games. That makes me sad.”

How did the community react to the /All Chat news?

The community is rather critical of the decision – as you can see from the over 30K upvotes on Reddit. Riot Games is merely trying to appear to be taking action against toxicity instead of making profound changes, they say. Some members of the community feel that an improved Honor System with better rewards would entice players to be less toxic in-game.

Players who don’t want to see or interact with the /All chat already have the option to disable it in the settings anyway. So for players who don’t want to have anything to do with the opposing team at all, there is already an alternative. For this reason, the decision to permanently block the /All chat is incomprehensible for many.

Currently, Riot still emphasizes that they are testing the deactivation of /All. However, it is possible that this feature will be a permanent part of the future of League of Legends.

/All chat will only be removed in some regions

Riot has said in the patch 11.21 notes that the reaction to remove the /All Chat was different from region to region. So Riot will only remove /All Chat in regions where this change was more accepted by players than in some others.

It was also confirmed in the patch notes that /All Chat will only be removed for Patch 11.21 and Patch 11.22 for now.

Is this the right approach to combat toxicity in League of Legends? Let us know on Discord – you can chat with anyone about it there!

Patch Schedule – League of Legends 

League of Legends releases bug fixes, improvements and new content at regular intervals. Below you can find the patch schedule for 2022. Note: Patch dates are subject to change at any time and for a variety of reasons. We recommend that you visit this page one to two days before a scheduled patch to see if it has been rescheduled. If a patch is postponed up to 48 hours before its release, we will post a warning at the top of this page. 

PATCH SCHEDULED DATE

• 12.1 Wednesday, January 5, 2022 
• 12.2 Thursday, January 20, 2022 
• 12.3 Wednesday, February 2, 2022 
• 12.4 Wednesday, February 16, 2022 
• 12.5 Wednesday, March 2, 2022 
• 12.6 Wednesday, March 30, 2022 
• 12.7 Wednesday, April 13, 2022 
• 12.8 Wednesday, April 27, 2022 
• 12.9 Wednesday, May 11, 2022 
• 12.10 Wednesday, May 25, 2022 
• 12.11 Wednesday, June 8, 2022 
• 12.12 Thursday, June 23, 2022 
• 12.13 Wednesday, July 13, 2022 
• 12.14 Wednesday, July 27, 2022 
• 12.15 Wednesday, August 10, 2022
• 12.16 Wednesday, August 24, 2022
• 12.17 Thursday, September 8, 2022
• 12.18 Wednesday, September 21, 2022
• 12.19 Wednesday, October 5, 2022
• 12.20 Wednesday, October 19, 2022
• 12.21 Wednesday, November 2, 2022
• 12.22 Wednesday, November 16, 2022
• 12.23 Wednesday, December 7, 2022