That would make more sense. I guess the developers where high or something when they made that decision. lol

xD I think it's a carry over from the older games, like Half Life 1, where that was the standard. Don't ask me WHY :P

Wasn't it Y for all-chat and U for team-chat in Half-Life, though?
Maybe Quake.

Ya, whoever flipped those is dumb.

I see no issue with either scheme. Besides, aren't most keyboard-based control schemes customizable?

Yes, they are, but it still doesn't make sense. I shouldn't even have to change that. I don't expect everything in the defaults to be what I want, but come on, this isn't even trying.

Again, I don't see the issue.

This kind of reminds of the RGB to CMYK color theory.
The only real reason I would say a game dev would do this is to make symbols readable to other devs on the team. Those letters for the naked eye can't be looked at as 'letters' when you're busy quickly looking through an interface.

However in this case, it would be much harder to find your team chat if we used common chat symbols that everyone would use. Personally I would use an uncommon letter too, like this one: *v*.