League of Legends' notoriously awful cross-team chat functionality will be no more as of patch 11.21, or it'll at least be that way for a while. Game director Andrei van Roon says Riot is testing the MOBA without its all chat option and will assess keeping the change or re-enabling it later on.
The ability to talk amongst your own teammates is staying, but Riot's latest blog post explained how the "negative interactions outweigh the positives" when it comes to the banter between opposing sides. Riot specifically noted it's for matchmade queues, so perhaps you'll see it stick around in premade 5v5 groups, but the change isn't set to go live until sometime next week.
For now, you can enjoy exchanges of "glhf" before laning, but Riot is looking to address the nature of in-game verbal abuse by disabling the chat when the next update hits. You'll also regain the ability to communicate across teams at the end of a match, so you can still send over a friendly "gg."
League of Legends' all chat—and its team chat, for that matter—is fairly infamous for its verbal abuse, and Riot has a long history of acknowledging as much while trying to implement new measures to curb bad player behavior. After the MOBA's all chat goes away, Riot plans on evaluating the change through reports, penalties, surveys, and direct feedback.
You'll still be able to use in-game emotes that pop up over your champion and champion mastery actions, unless those are muted. Riot acknowledged that plenty of players do use all chat to spare a few kind words, but believes "the tradeoff is worth it to cut down on the growing negativity".
Riot noted it's looking for ways to cut back on other frustrating parts of the experience, too. Recently, League of Legends implemented new penalties for players that decide to AFK, explaining how 9% of League's players are repeat offenders when it comes to AFKing.