/dev: Team Voice in League

Hey everyone. In light of team voice chat files making their way onto the PBE we wanted to talk to you all about our plans for team-based voice communications in League.

Team-based competitive games have evolved since League was released. When we launched, in-game voice communications weren’t a standard in PC games. But now it’s not only the norm, it’s expected.

As a team-based game with the potential to be hyper-competitive, it’s something we have heard many of you have felt was missing from League. The text chat and ping system have served you all well for years (and will continue to for years to come), but we want to provide Team Voice for those of you who want to communicate seamlessly with your teammates.

We think when done well, team voice chat opens up the doors for enhanced teamwork and coordination, and has the potential to improve the overall gameplay experience for players that would like to use it.

So why now? We didn’t pursue team voice chat earlier because it couldn’t meet our standards for safety and reliability. But that’s changed based on advances in our technology to identify bad actors. With that in mind we’re now ready to reopen a door we’d previously closed by revisiting team voice chat. And we’ll do this by working with you all to find the best version of team voice chat for the League community.

We want to get this right, so it isn’t going to happen fast.

We hear that you are worried about a world where some people use Team Voice to be jerks, but we want to reassure you: we’re listening to your concerns and we are committed to making sure that that world does not come to pass. So we’re going to extensively work, test, and iterate to make this a feature worthy of your trust. Some of this work includes meeting with players around the globe to get feedback on their concerns and making sure Team Voice meets their expectations. 

Other options we’re exploring to ensure quality include rolling this feature out one language/region at a time, making it great in each one before introducing it to the next. Additionally, no matter what, players will have to be in good standing in order to access Team Voice. We’re working through the exact criteria for evaluating that now and we’ll be sure to keep you updated.

We know we have to hold and meet a high quality bar before we consider bringing Team Voice to live anywhere, and we're excited about working with you all to make sure we clear that bar.

We don’t have exact timelines right now because doing this the right way will take a lot of work and we aren’t yet ready to share concrete details, but you can expect to hear more from us on Team Voice later this year in a future Dev Update.