The penalties of leaving a ranked Apex Legends match!

We have to start this article with a personal request. If you are thinking of leaving any match in Apex Legends, don’t do it. Just don’t! It ruins the fun for your team mates and it sets a bad precedent for the community. We hope that you are reading this article out of pure curiosity and with no nefarious purpose in mind.Just to protect yourself from a derank right?

That being said, as you saw from the title, we are going to clarify what are the penalties for leaving a ranked match in this article, since accidents do happen and blackouts are still a thing in the 21st century.

What are the penalties for leaving a ranked match?

The penalty for leaving a ranked match in Apex Legends is a minimum of 10 minutes ban from any kind of matchmaking (including training and practice modes) and a double subtraction of the entry fee. These penalties apply for matches that the player logged in with a full squad.

The Arena leaver penalty system is the same as the Battler Royale one, with the exception that, since there is no entry fee in the Ranked Arenas system, the player will lose double the Arena Points of losing a match.

As you can see, Respawn Entertainment doesn’t go lightly on the leaver penalties. They have made it clear that they will not tolerate leaving matches before they are done and you can see from the penalty system that they put their words into practice.

Matchmaking temporary disabled

At first, a 10-minute ban might not seem like the most strict leaver penalty but these 10 minutes usually are enough to calm down a “hot-headed” player and give him some much-needed time away from the game. This is a way to punish the players that commit the “crime” but also protect their future team mates from them.

Of course, the abandon penalty can easily balloon up to crazy numbers for players that choose to leave many ranked matches in a short amount of time.

Double subtraction of the entry fee.

This is where the Apex Legends penalty system really decides to punish players that abandon ranked matches. The developers realised that just stopping someone from playing Apex Legends for a little bit was not enough to deter a player from abandoning matches. That’s why they decided to make it a bit more painful.

Subtracting the entry cost twice is a real blow for anyone that wants to climb the ranks. As you can see from the following table, the RP loss can reach very “painful” numbers. Especially for someone aspiring to reach the Apex Predator rank.

RANK TIER	ENTRY COST
Rookie	0-15 RP
Bronze	15-24 RP
Silver	27-36 RP
Gold	39-48 RP
Platinum	51-60 RP
Diamond	63-72 RP
Masters	75RP, with 5RP every 1,000 RP beyond Masters Threshold

And let's face it, the people that would abandon a match are probably people that REALLY care about their Ranking Points. The expression, “hit them where it hurts” is applied in practice right here.

What makes the leaver penalty system just?

The abandonment penalty is something used to punish people that ruin the fun for their team and in general, the Apex Legends community as a whole agrees that you can not call them unfair punishments. With 2 small exceptions.

Unranked Matches

The leaving penalty only applies for Arenas matches and ranked Battle Royale. The developers decided that it would be excessive if they punished players for leaving casual Battle Royale matches. The whole purpose of the casual modes is that people don’t have any pressure when they are playing and they don’t have to be stressed if they suddenly need to leave a match.

Loss Forgiveness

There are cases in which people get disconnected from a match due to circumstances beyond their control. A player that lost connection to the internet was kicked out of a match and on top of that got a leaver penalty and would have every right to be frustrated. Thankfully the developers in the latest Apex Legends season created a new leaver penalty system that takes this into account.

Now there is the magic of Loss Forgiveness that is applied in specific cases so that the players that just had an accidental disconnect are not punished unjustly. Although Loss Forgiveness is not a free-for-all pass that will make all unjustified leaver penalties go away it is a great tool for mitigating in very specific cases.

So, if you constantly leave matches because you are bored with the game, make sure to try out our Apex Legends random hero generator to make it at least a bit more fun and break the monotony.