League of Legends is getting native voice chat

Riot’s flagship MOBA, League of Legends, is getting native voice chat, according to reveals on the game’s Public Beta Environment (PBE). The voice chat will feature voice-changing (Voicemod) features to alter your voice.

There’s currently no set date for the feature’s release, but it will reportedly require Honor Level 3 or higher and will be available in champion select and in-game during matches. Here’s what we know:

LoL voice chat is coming, and it’s already on PBE

The initial files for voice chat in LoL appeared on the PBE in March this year, but now its functionality has been partially revealed. And while issues about toxicity over voice have already been noted, the Voicemod system, an AI voice-changing software, will potentially combat that by offering players a chance to change their voice in-game to avoid abuse.

As mentioned, there’s no current release date set for in-game voice chat, and Riot clearly wants to make sure it gets it right with its implementation.

There have been other attempts to incorporate voice chat into LoL in the past, with perhaps the most memorable being Curse Voice, an external mod that linked into League and allowed others with the plug-in to speak with their teammates. Curse Voice was active between 2014 and 2017 and was especially popular in high-Elo play. Riot eventually banned elements of the plug-in (which also featured Baron and Dragon jungle timers before they were a standard part of League of Legends), and it was eventually discontinued. Now, almost every element of that plug-in will have become a part of the game.

A cynical view is that this is Riot’s late-to-the-party attempt to fix communication issues that have been solved in rival games for years (how long has Dota 2 had voice chat? Oh, since the beta? Just checking). All while tacking on some Arc Raiders-style AI voice changing so they can meet manager quotas on AI usage without having to endure community backlash when they put out the latest Ahri skin splash art with 17 fingers.

(To say nothing of the fact that voice chats will be recorded. We can only speculate what they’ll be used for, but we can assume, at the lowest level, they’ll be used to ban players, and likely also fed into some AI learning model. But who would put it beyond Riot Games to also hand voice chats over to government and law enforcement?)

And, of course, the biggest question is whether you really want to listen to what other League of Legends players are saying? For the mute-all-and-concentrate-on-the-gameplay crowd, this will be just another thing that they can ignore. For the rest, it will be a great innovation for players looking to tell each other to kill themselves over a video game. Not to even mention the potential harassment against women that every voice chat game ever has faced. But that’s where the AI voice changing comes in.

The real benefit will likely come at the highest levels of solo queue, where familiarity with fellow players and communication can shine. Or in those rare games where you find a reasonable human being or two, and suddenly, you’re playing better and finding new duos.