Riot is closing League of Legends’ public chat rooms

Sometimes they’re wonderful, but there’s no denying that internet forums and chat rooms can at times be amongst the worst things ever to be devised by man.

League of Legends may be one of the biggest games in the world, but its chat rooms are amongst the most foul. And Riot’s had enough, with confirmation that the developer intends to shut them down.

The official public chat rooms have grown rife with RP sellers, scammers and Elo-boost spam,” Riot said. The default four rooms we established can be used by a tiny fraction of our players at a time. Given the number of League players, most conversation spills 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. 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 behaviour.

As an immediate action we’re going to disable the public chat rooms until they’re useful and accessible. In their current shape they just don’t work and can actively create negative experiences for many players (especially new players).

We’ll keep all private chat rooms and messaging available to everyone, and bring the official public chat rooms back as soon as we can.”

Going forwards Riot is pondering what alternatives it may be able to offer.