League of Legends Finally Receives Voice Chat

Riot Games has consistently proved that they are a company that values the voice of the community, at least most of the time. Once again, they’ve held that stance by making available one of the most anticipated features – Voice Chat in League of Legends.

Voice chat in league of legends has had one of the rockiest roads of any feature to ever be released in the game. Just two years ago, Riot Games’ stance was a firm ‘no’, because they wanted to alleviate toxicity as much as possible on the platform. Whereas understandable, if the plethora of cyber-bullying on games like Minecraft are any indicator, it left the game with one of the most crucial features ever.

In 2017, the company revised their standing on whether or not voice chat in league of legends had a place in the game. They explained that their initial fear was misplaced, and if handled correctly, voice chat would have an important place in the game. In the course of the year, the community was kept afloat on the progress of integrating the new feature. After winter, they finally shared the first prototype of what they wanted the game to look like.

As it turned out, the voice feature was to be different than most other games. Instead of letting any players in the game hear and speak to each other, this chat would be limited to premade teams in the League of Legends franchise, at least until Riot Games can figure out how to better curb toxicity. It seems like a pretty viable method of preventing toxicity in the game, and most players seemed to agree.

Over the course of the week, the design and limited availability of chat has been the course of controversy and jubilation all round. The Luddites want the good old League of Legends they have been so used to all these years to remain, while others are happy with the change. One user on Reddit, for instance, claimed that thus far, things have been less toxic than they previously were. In his view, hearing another person’s voice has had a ‘humanising’ effect.

Some people have claimed the feature is virtually useless since that’s what Discord was meant to address to begin with. All the same, since parties are free to use it as they wish (or otherwise discard it, if not), it’s an overall welcome addition to the Franchise.

Finally, according to the newly released screengrabs of the UI from Riot Games, voice chat will have its own dedicated menu in the client and inside the game itself. A small microphone used to control the same will be positioned in the bottom corner of both of each of them.