If you ask any Clash Royale (Free) player what frustrates them most about the game, people will likely have a wide variety of things, potentially centralizing around the pay model of the game, chest timers, and similar… But it seems everyone is unified around just how frustrating player emotes can make the game. If you don’t play Clash Royale, here’s what you’re “missing"- Communication in the game has been distilled down to ten buttons, and through the miracle that is human nature on the internet, people have figured out how to be total sh*t heads with only these ten emotes at their disposal. In the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm, “Life, uh… finds a way."

In any player versus player game, losing is just part of the equation. You can’t win all the time, and Clash Royale’s matchmaking seems pretty good on having all players eventually hit their personal skill caps at pretty close to a 50% win rate… Or, you’ll be losing basically half the time you’re playing. Losing can be a frustrating experience in itself, but that whole thing just gets dialed up to 11 when your opponent is incessantly spamming the crying king and “Wow!" In following various Clash Royale communities, removing, or at minimum, offering a way to mute these emotes is one of the most consistently asked for features.

Well, Supercell responded this morning and explained that they have no intention of removing emotes from the game. Their reasoning is, um, interesting-

Evoking strong emotions – is at the heart of why we’re not planning to implement a mute option. Emotes are loved by some and hated by others – even within the Clash Royale team! We believe these strong emotions are integral to the core of the game.

Seems weird, but, hey, whatever. Emote spam is one of the many reasons I don’t play Clash Royale anywhere near as much as I used to. I play games to have fun, not be frustrated, which I guess puts me in the minority when it comes to Clash Royale? This all seems real strange to me.