Can You Get Banned for Leaving a Game in League of Legends? 

League of Legends games tend to get utterly frustrating at times. This is entirely natural as League of Legends is a competitive, challenging environment where all players give their best shot at winning. 

Using all of your skills, knowledge, and brainpower while ultimately ending up on the losing side certainly takes its toll. People have varying ways of coping with this frustration and difficulty, but some just exceed everything. 

So long as your frustration doesn’t turn into sheer anger and fury, you will mostly be fine. Seeking ways of channeling negative emotions into something positive is the best thing you can do in these situations. 

However, as I’ve said, some players take different approaches. One of these, which seems to be all too common lately, is leaving games. 

In this article, we will discuss whether or not leaving games is a bannable offense – how punishing it can get, and so on. I will also go deeper into some other things to keep it an exciting read. 

With the introductions out of the way, let’s begin with our article. 

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Can You Get Banned For Leaving?

The short answer is yes. The long one is much more complicated. 

While you will undoubtedly be penalized after every match you leave, you will not get banned every time. League of Legends has had a system in place since its inception to deal with the issue of leaving. It is promptly named LeaverBuster, and I will explain how it works precisely. 

Each leave is penalized separately. After each match you leave in the middle of, you will be punished appropriately. For the first few matches you might end up leaving, you will be blacklisted, so to speak. 

This means that you will get less LP for the next few games, which can significantly hinder your ranked progression. Remember that even leaving normal matches applies an LP detriment on your account, so this is a cross-queue thing. 

Leaving multiple games in a row will end up putting you in the low priority queue. The queue and the system are quite deliberate once it starts working and it functions thus: 

Tier 1: 5-minute queue delay for five games.

Tier 2: 10-minute queue delay for five games.

Tier 3: 15-minute queue delay for five games.

Tier 4: 15-minute queue delay for five games + 24-hour queue lockout.

Tier 5: 15-minute queue delay for five games + 3-day queue lockout.

Tier 6: 15-minute queue delay for five games + 7-day queue lockout.

Tier 7: 15-minute queue delay for five games + 2-week queue lockout.

A huge thank you to the League of Legends wiki for this list. Be sure to check it out for more details on how the entire LeaverBuster system functions. We are strictly focusing on what leaving mid-game does, while the system goes well beyond that. 

Back to the topic at hand. 

Continuous leaving means continuously growing punishment. This is perfectly logical and should immediately put you off from leaving. However, some players would like to argue that leaving a game is sometimes justified and may ask what goes on if they are forced to leave. 

We will discuss that further, so keep reading to find that out. 

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Is Leaving Justifiable?

As I’ve discussed in our BM article, this sort of behavior only seems to be a negative thing. Firstly though, let me address the situations of forced leaving. 

Forced leaving can be summarized as a situation where you simply have no other choice but to be left out of the game. These can be connection issues, real-life moments, etc. 

You will not be penalized for connection issues, server crashes, or when every player leaves the game. Real-life situations that might be calling your attention are mitigated by the LeaverBuster not banning you outright. 

You will receive a minor penalty on your account for the first few games of leaving, which can be lived through without effort. However, if you keep leaving, you won’t be able to justify your situation with Riot and will have to face the penalty in its full capacity. 

I understand that you might find this frustrating, but understand Riot’s position on this. They cannot go over tens of millions of cases each day to individually check if you have justifiably left a game. 

The LeaverBuster system is, well, a system. It is automatized and created meticulously to make as few mistakes as possible. They give you a grace period of a few games, and I think it is perfectly fair in this regard. 

The case of morality and justification of leaving a game that you are losing for any reason – I think that this is a downright stupid notion. As with the BM case, doing anything negative will have negative consequences. 

Giving up mid-game will make your team just lose, you included. There is no point in giving up; even when all seems lost, you can still make a comeback attempt. I believe that no game is truly lost until you see that Defeat screen. Believing that has allowed me to win seemingly impossible games, and honest to God, I think you can do that, too. 

Give every game your all. That will allow you to learn how to play in difficult situations, cope with your negative emotions and frustrations, and help you achieve greatness in this game. Hell, it can even help you become a better person in life generally. 

Keeping a positive attitude about everything is about the best thing you can do as a person. The game is a team game, and personally taking leave and abandoning everyone else is selfish, unsportsmanlike, and deserving of punishment. 

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Final Thoughts

Yes, you can get banned for leaving. More often than not, this ban is entirely a justifiable thing. There are rare cases where you actually have a proper reason to abandon everything and quit the game. In those cases, Riot gives you a few games of a grace period before applying the actual penalties on your account. 

They have thought of real-life responsibilities and have promptly given you space in this regard. However, acting selfishly and ruining the game for everyone is perfectly bannable and should be. I highly recommend you don’t do it as it is just nothing more than a cowardly act. 

I hope you’ve found this article fun and informative to read, and I wish you all the best on the Summoner’s Rift!