League of Legends might be adding public voice chat—and as someone with a combined 2,655 hours in Dota 2 and Deadlock, I can safely say: Oh no

MOBAs are interesting videogames—imagine, if you will, a slot machine. Then imagine that slot machine takes forty minutes to do one pull of the arm, and also it's yelling colourful and exciting swearwords at you in a language you don't understand the entire time. That's sort of what playing a MOBA with public voice chat is like.

League of Legends might be joining those hallowed halls of flaming, as suggested by files found on the public build environment (PBE) by SkinSpotlights on X. The files in question include reports for "VOICE COMMS ABUSE", as well as entries for a comms panel that include voice options for party or team.

While League of Legends has let you communicate over voice with folks you're partied up with for a while, being able to yell at strangers is an entirely new ballgame for the MOBA and… oh god, let me tell you, you aren't missing out on much. I'm not even sure why Riot's adding this function, bar capitalising on the Discord fiasco.

Here are my credentials: I have over 2,400 hours on Dota 2, and approaching 200 hours in Deadlock. I wouldn't consider myself "good" at MOBAs (because no one truly is), however, I am very experienced in the absolute torture chamber that is having your voice chat turned on while someone chews you out for feeding in your lane, only for you to be forced into the social equivalent of a small, confined space with them for a 30-minute match.

I don't want to be a cynic. I don't think people are inherently bad. But MOBAs are a special kind of pressure cooker that makes people act out and reach for their favourite book of slurs the moment something goes slightly wrong.

In several of my recent Deadlock games, I've had to gently encourage my teammates not to tilt themselves because the early game goes even slightly not their way. People get mad, explosively and often, and as one player in the game's subreddit observes, "How fitting for League that the first hint at voice chat we get is the report function."

The upshot of this is that, generally speaking, voice chat does promote a lot of cooperation when the vibes are good. And believe it or not, that can absolutely happen. At the very least PCG contributor Izabela Tomakic seems to think so. But also: Prepare for naughty words and implications about your mother/father/dog from some very furious people. Or just turn voice chat off, as is your right.

I've reached out to Riot to see if this is a fully-fledged feature or just something preliminary dug up in the game files, and I'll update this article if I receive a response.