The word “surrender” carries a lot of weigh in League of Legends, as a surrender is the only way to quickly get out of a lost LoL game.
That’s why so many players were surprised to see developer Riot Games step in to make changes to how surrender works in LoL. And some of those changes could have a big impact on some players and games.
So what exactly did Riot change? We’ll walk through each new change below.
All the new changes to surrender in LoL
The biggest change to how surrender will work in LoL is that players now face double the cooldown time between each attempted surrender vote compared to before. Whereas players were previously able to attempt a surrender vote for their team every three minutes, surrender votes are now only allowed every six minutes for each individual player.
The intention of this change is clear, in that Riot is hoping this will result in significantly less surrender spam from unhappy individual players. Not only does surrender spam bother teammates, it can also fixate a player on attempting to end the game early. With this change, players won’t be able to fixate so completely on trying to leave the game, and may instead be better contributors to comeback attempts.
With that being said, the overall team cooldown for surrender timers will remain the same. This means that while one individual player can only attempt a surrender once every six minutes, another player can still initiate a surrender vote after only three minutes have passed.
Those surrender votes will also be anonymous moving forward. This might make it easier for some players to feel comfortable initiating a surrender vote without being seen as giving up. Of course, nothing’s stopping anyone from claiming the initiation after it has begun.
For some players, the biggest change is actually the simplest. Moving forward, any surrender vote in LoL that cannot mathematically pass will automatically resolve itself. This means that players will no longer have to deal with a surrender question hanging on their screen even after it’s no longer possible for the vote to pass.
While limitations on surrender spam carry the greatest potential impact of these changes, it’s actually the automatic resolution of doomed surrender votes that has gotten the most attention from players.
Should there be surrender votes in League of Legends?
Some players are taking this opportunity to again voice the opinion that there shouldn’t be surrender votes to begin with, and that the surrender options harms games of League of Legends.
There are many other competitive games that don’t have such an option. The most prominent example is likely Dota 2, a competing MOBA that does not allow players to surrender.
But even without the formal option to surrender, Dota 2 games may still be ended early by players who no longer wish to compete. This just happens less formally, with players refusing to exit their base until the game ends.
