League of Legends is a very toxic game, but some people believe that adding something liek voice chat could diminish some of the in-game toxicity. A Riot dev reveals why they haven't done so yet though.
Recently, League of Legends veteran and 100 Thieves Challengers player Darshan revealed his thoughts on voice chat and how it can be used to better the League of Legends solo queue environment, after having experienced it while playing VALORANT.
This has brought up the discussion of voice chat in League of Legends once more, with some players firmly against it, while others do think that it could be useful. Finally, a Riot dev also spoke up and revealed why they're still holding off on voice comms.
LoL: Voice Chat In League - Will It Ever Happen?
League of Legends only has integrated voice chat when you're already in a premade party. This voice chat is hardly used though, since most people in a party will either be using Discord or TeamSpeak to communicate with their friends.
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Team voice chat seems to be a far off dream, even with pro-players weighing in on the discussion. 100 Thieves Challengers top laner Darshan "Darshan" Upadhya believes that adding voice chat will make the game less toxic since it'll 'humanize' the players behind the keyboard.
If we had voice chat we could justify our favorite support pick with ease:
This should stop players from needlessly flaming others, because they feel they're talking to an actual human or person, rather than a pixelated character from Runeterra.
Even when we are upset, when we understand clearly that the other player we are talking to is a human being and not just some pixels on a screen, we can be a lot more understanding in our response.
Darshan also stated that, after having played VALORANT and experienced the voice chat, he felt like he was actually playing on a team during his matches, an aspect that was missing from League.
Will League of Legends Receive Voice Chat?
It seems like voice chat in League of Legends is a ways off. Joe "HonestPillow" White reponded to Darshan, explaining that he understood the other's sentiment, but that with voice chat come other toxicity issues, especially for POC and women.
I share this opinion but I don't think it solves all behavioral issues and definitely introduces some new ones. Especially for women and POC who get unfairly targeted by simply participating in voice comms for example.
— Joe White (@HonestPillow) March 6, 2023
Many others chimed in on the discussion with content creator ProxyFox stating that voice comms aren't necessarily needed in a game like League of Legends She also explained that while 90% of comms in VALORANT might not be too bad, the 10% that are toxic can be horrific.
Some players thought that maybe adding in the honor system, to let only those who reached a specific milestone go into team voice chat if available. But even when a player asked why Riot doesn't just add a 'opt in' button White had an answer ready.
[...] communication is a pretty vital system in an extremely competitive game and making this "opt in" is a pretty big disadvantage for those that may not want to for harassment reasons
So, while there are two sides to the debate, it seems that for now Riot is completely against the idea of adding voice chat to League of Legends. How different is LoL compared to other highly competitive games though to warrant such a distinction?