League of Legends' Early Surrender Option May Become a Majority Vote

Riot Games is considering making the early surrender feature one that doesn't require a unanimous vote and will instead be decided by a majority.

As opposed to the normal surrender option that's available after 20 minutes has passed and requires four out of five teammates to vote in favor of surrendering, an early surrender that's available between 15 minutes and the 19:59-minute mark requires all five players to be in agreement. While this prevents games from being given up on too early, Riot Games says that a test is rolling out that would remove the unanimous rule and let players surrender early even if the team has one naysayer.

"Sometime soon (probably starting this week) we'll be testing a change to the early surrender rules that removes the unanimous vote requirement and instead goes with the normal 4 of 5 yes votes," Riot Meddler said on the League of Legends boards. "That change will initially be only on the Oceanic server, if it tests well there we'll then roll it out to other regions as well."

Since the test won't be available everywhere, players in other regions who are in favor of the change will have to put their faith in the Oceanic region to surrender early and make the potential change a reality. Assuming it passes those first stages though, everyone else should be able to test the feature soon after.

A 4-1 vote is something that happens all too often during early surrenders, sometimes for good reason and sometimes due to stubbornness. Whether it's because someone truly things they can win or a disgruntled player just wants to hold the rest of the team hostage for five more minutes, the change would remove both of these possibilities for better or worse.

Riot Meddler also explained why Riot went with the unanimous vote for early surrender in the first place by saying that they wanted to make sure people didn't give up on winnable games too early due to a majority vote. However, the stats have apparently shown that a failed early surrender vote often just leads to a normal surrender once 20 minutes have passed.

"We originally went with a unanimous requirement for early surrenders to ensure players weren't having games that looked winnable still surrendered out from under them that early. Looking at early surrender's use however games that fail a surrender 4-1 between 15-20 very often end up with a surrender or defeat around 20 minutes instead. That means the unanimous requirement is mainly just dragging out already lost games."

Oceanic players should look for the change sometime this week or next with other players getting it sometime later.