Nobody likes playing with teammates that just disappear for no apparent reason. Most competitive online games assume there to be a full team on either side and suddenly being a person down can be enormously disruptive to the game. We get that life happens and sometimes you gotta put down your game to deal with a situation, but it's widely assumed that queuing into League of Legends means you've got at least 20 minutes of free time to spend kicking ass and taking names.

Sadly, not everyone who plays LoL is working with that assumption. In Riot's latest development blog, BarackProbama and TimTamMonster reveal that 9% of League's players are chronic AFKers, leaving games and teammates to play out a hopeless situation.

Currently, League of Legends punishes AFKers with queue delays. There are three tiers of delay, going from 5-minute delays to 15-minute delays. The more games you go AFK, the more tiers you ascend and the longer you have to wait to play your next game. Only through good behavior (ie. playing games without leaving) can a player descend through these tiers until they're playing games as soon as they become available.

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But as that chart revealed, delays just aren't enough for a segment of LoL's population. To get serious in tackling AFKers, Riot is instituting a new punishment: queue lockouts. These are temporary bans that prevent players from queuing up games entirely. Four additional tiers are added to the punishment scale, with the first tier locking players out for a day while the top tier bans players for two whole weeks.

Leaver Problems LOL - via Riot

Even after the lockout has expired, punished players will still get hit with a 15-minute queue delay and be required to play games without going AFK before that delay goes away.

Additionally, Riot has upgraded its detection algorithms to tell the difference between a chronic AFKer and a player with a bad connection.

These new AFK rules are going to be rolled out "in a few regions" before being applied globally. Keep an eye on future patch notes to see when AFK lockouts go live.

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