Dota 2 game abandons happen up to 20 percent of the time in some ranks

An overwhelming number of players are abandoning Dota 2 games.

Gosu.ai is an AI game trainer that helps gamers improve their mechanical skills. It developed an AI assistant that analyzes users’ in-game performance, shows the disparity of skills from each rank, and can compile some data from Dota 2 games. One of those data points is the rate of abandons and, according to Gosu, across over 50 million recorded games a whopping 11.7% had a leaver.

The rate of players abandoning is inversely proportional to a player’s rank.

20.5% of matches including bottom-ranked Herald players have at least one quitter. Guardian players are slightly lower, with leavers recorded on 19.7% matches.

This steadily improves rank by rank. Just 9.8% of the 13.3 million recorded games from Ancient rank saw a player abandon. Matches with Divine players sit at 8.1% while the top-ranked Immortal players have just 6.6%. Still, that percentage is surprisingly high and shows that the various abandonment penalties implemented in the game have done little to mitigate the problem.

What happens after a Dota 2 abandon?

Leaving a game has different consequences for the leaver and the remaining players. Dota 2 automatically relegates players that repeatedly abandon games to low priority matchmaking. Low priority matches are standard Random Draft games but exclusively involve players being punished for either abandoning or other behavioral issues.

Players need to win five games in low priority in order to enable normal matchmaking again.

Teammates are free to leave after a player has been assessed with an abandon. They have the option of continuing on with an extra boost to their passive gold acquisition.

There are several reasons why players leave games. Rage quitting is one of the most common reasons, with players exiting out of frustration with either teammates or their own performance.

Another factor is unstable internet connections. Dota 2 players routinely opt to play on servers from outside their region in order to enjoy faster queues. Though far-away servers can occasionally offer better latency, this can cause other issues that may force players to leave mid-game.

The good news is that players assessed with an occasional abandon will not be sent to low priority.