Feature Spotlight: What You Send Is What Stays — React, Mute, Pin, and the Two Controls That Left
On September 13, in v2.16.57, two controls left the messages page. The changelog carried the short version the same day: messages in direct messages and group chats can no longer be edited or deleted, and a direct-message thread can no longer be deleted. What you send is what stays, for both sides. This is the fuller version — what every control that remains actually does, who can see it, and why the two that left are gone.
The Two Controls That Left
The Edit Message and Delete Message options are gone from direct messages and from group chats. They are not hidden behind a setting and they are not coming back for a tier; if anything tries the old route, the server answers with one sentence: “Editing and deleting messages isn't available.” A direct-message thread can no longer be deleted either. You can archive it, mute it or pin it, and it stays.
The one sentence version
A report always has the message it refers to. Nothing anyone sends you can be changed or made to disappear between the moment you read it and the moment you report it.
Why: A Policy About Evidence
Editing and deleting were a way for a message to disappear before it could be reported. It did not matter how rarely that happened; a report that points at a message that has since been rewritten, or at a message that is no longer there, is a report about nothing. So the policy is simple: what is sent is what stays. Every message in a DM or a group chat is exactly what the sender sent, for as long as the conversation exists.
That is a real trade and it is worth being honest about the cost. You cannot fix a typo. You cannot take back the message you sent to the wrong room. The convenience that left was small, and what it bought is not: the certainty that nothing said to you can be made to disappear, and the same certainty for everyone you talk to. If you make a mistake, the fix is the same one you would use out loud — send the correction. Both messages stay, and both are yours.
What Still Works, and Who Sees It
Everything below is unchanged. The column on the right is the part people ask about most: whether the other side of the conversation can tell.
The first four rows are what the game calls view state: they change how the conversation looks and behaves for you, and only for you. Nobody can see that you muted them, pinned them or archived them, and nothing you do on that list touches the messages in it. Reactions are the exception because a reaction is something you send; it needs you to be a participant in the conversation, and it shows up for everyone in it.
Muting is not leaving
A muted conversation still receives every message. You stop being pinged about them; you do not stop getting them. If what you want is for the messages to stop, that is a different tool and it has its own article.
Leaving a Group
Any member can leave a group, and the confirmation now says exactly what will happen: you will leave, the room and its messages stay for everyone else, and nobody can add you back to it. The room sees a system line that you left the group. Leaving does not delete anything, for you or for them — the earlier confirmation implied more than that, and it was rewritten so that the button does what the sentence above it says.
The One Place Editing Still Exists
Your private conversation with your Pal keeps its edit and delete controls, and that is not an oversight. The rule above is about evidence, and evidence needs two sides: someone who could be reported and someone who could report them. In a conversation with your Pal, nobody else is on the other end. There is no one to be reported and no one to report, so there is nothing for the rule to protect, and the conveniences stay.
What this does not change
Blocking has its own rules and its own article, and it is not restated here. Who can see that you are online is a separate setting with a separate guide. And the forums are a different place with a different etiquette, covered in the forums guide. This article is about the messages page and nothing else.
Where to Go Next
If you want the reasoning behind the whole messaging system rather than one change to it, why messages are not end-to-end encrypted is the piece to read next; this change is the same principle applied to editing. Blocking a player covers the tool for when you want the messages to stop rather than to stay. And the changelog has the short version of this and of everything else that has shipped.