LoL games with 4-1 failed surrender votes have a mind-boggling low win rate

Sometimes ranked League of Legends games get out of hand and are simply doomed. So, the best course of action is to “go next.” But you’ll often encounter players with a never-give-up attitude that hold you hostage in a game that has already been decided and it turns out that these games have mind-boggling low win rates.

According to the latest Riot Games data shared by League’s lead designer Matt Leung-Harrison on April 5, 96.7 percent of the games that have 4-1 failed early surrender votes are lost. What’s more, further analysis showed that 90 percent of these games hold players hostage, 45 percent of these games are usually forfeited when they hit the 20-minute mark, and 50 percent of these games end naturally or by players “opening mid.”

If you’re not familiar with the term “hold hostage” in League, it typically denotes a situation where the large majority of players want to surrender the game, but one or two players don’t want to surrender out of spite or they are strong believers they might be able to turn the tides.

On top of that, the large majority of these games—80 percent to be exact—are normally resolved by 25 minutes and the games that last up to 30 and 40 minutes have 10 and 45 percent win rates, respectively. But bear in mind that games that not many games last over 40 minutes in League.

To stop players from holding others hostage in games they don’t want to play, Riot made an important change in Patch 13.7 in ranked and flex lobbies for early surrender to pass if four out of five players want to forfeit. This means the unanimous surrender at 15 minutes has been entirely removed from the game and now you can just “go next.”