Riot Games have decided to close their official public chat rooms. They say the space now belongs to the worst element of the League of Legends community: RP sellers, scammers, and Elo-boost spammers.
In its place, they’re planning a redesigned ‘hangout’ system for specialised in-game communities: mentoring groups, champion theory-crafting channels, casual ARAM collectives and the like.
The default four chat rooms aren’t large enough to hold even a significant fraction of LoL’s huge community, and its players tend to split off into private, community-created rooms.
“Unfortunately, private chat rooms and even the awesome community hubs like Dominate Dominion and Summoner School lack moderation tools beyond the ignore button,” say Riot. “While the experience in private chat rooms is better than the public versions, we still want to provide tools to address unwelcome drop-ins and toxic behavior.”
The plan is to disable the official public chat rooms effective immediately, pending a time they become “useful and accessible”.
“In their current shape they just don’t work and can actively create negative experiences for many players,” explain Riot. “Especially new players.”
Riot are working on a “persistent hangout” environment to replace them. They’ll be made up of the friends and acquaintances you spend the most time playing with, or who share the same preferences in mode or playstyle.
That’s a way off though – in the meantime, Riot will keep private rooms and messaging running. When was the last time you made use of the official public thoroughfare?
Cheers, Reign of Gaming.