League of Legends players have been asking for voice comms for a long time, and while the feature has been implemented for players in a party, solo queue games are dead silent. A LoL pro claims voice chat would curb toxicity, and a Riot dev responded with some reasons why it hasn’t been added.
The debate around whether or not voice chat should be added to League of Legends has been a hot-button issue for the community over the past few years.
There are a lot of upsides and downsides to its implementation, but voice chat’s prominence in Valorant, combined with a thread from Darshan, a pro-League of Legends player, on the subject, has stoked the fires of the argument and made it more appealing than ever.
A response from a Riot developer has confirmed that implementing voice chat into a solo queue is a thought on their mind as well, but there are some reasons why they’re hesitant about it.
LoL pro called for voice chat and a Riot dev responded
Darshan ‘Darshan’ Upadhyaya is a seasoned veteran within the League of Legends scene and has been competing since 2012. He’s been able to easily land on his feet in the pro scene after a short break from League of Legends, with him getting signed to 100 Thieves’ NACL team after leaving Cloud9.
However, during that break, he invested an entire month into learning Valorant with a coach to guide him along. During his time with the game, he noticed how much voice chat adds to the experience.
Upon returning to LoL, Darshan claimed that the addition of voice chat would help with the process of “humanizing our experience” in solo queue, and that it may help with the high levels of toxicity that exist within every skill bracket.
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 (@DarshanU) March 6, 2023
Darshan’s argument is that it’s a lot easier to flame other players when there’s a layer of anonymity there and that being able to hear someone’s voice and talk to them could make players more understanding.
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This thread prompted a response from a game developer at Riot, and while he thought Darshan had valid points, he also spoke about some of the possible downsides.
Agreed, it is not a solve all solution but I think it is a step in the right direction.
— Darshan (@DarshanU) March 6, 2023
Joe White, the game dev in question, pointed out that there could be additional behavioral issues introduced by a voice chat system that aren’t as much of a problem in text chat. Many of which are issues that are experienced by Valorant players.
Unfortunately, sexism and racism are very real issues when it comes to voice comms, not only in Valorant but in many multiplayer titles that allow for voice communication. When it comes to adding voice comms to a game like League of Legends that has a known history of toxic players, there’s as much risk of this hurting the experience as there is a chance for it to help.
Not to mention, League of Legends is a very different game that has a lot more ways to put teammates through torturous circumstances. For instance, there was a female streamer in Korea who got held hostage in a ranked game for upwards of 3 hours. That certainly isn’t possible in Valorant.
The conversation continued in a Reddit thread with some input from players in parts of the world outside of the US, introducing the argument that voice comms would be difficult to implement because of how many different languages exist within each region. However, that’s not something new to games that already have voice comms in places like Europe, right?
The argument has clear and valid arguments on both sides, and it remains to be seen whether or not Riot takes the plunge and tries to find a way to make voice chat a more regular part of League of Legends.
