Through a minor update, Valve has introduced a new feature that allows party-of-5 players to forfeit their matches after 30 minutes of game time.
Full parties of 5 can now surrender a match by typing “gg” in the chat, with the same 10-second countdown and cancel UI feature as in pro games. For the forfeiting team, this is scored as a loss, as explained by Valve in the latest post. Players can, however, choose to undo their forfeit within the allowed 10-second countdown. For now, this option is only available for 5-stacks ranked queues.
A feature that allows a team to surrender has been requested by the community for a very long time. However, many fans are against the idea of a forfeit button, as it ruins the game’s ‘play till the end’ mechanic. On the other hand, the surrender feature has existed in professional matches for various reasons. Until now, this feature existed in League of Legends and SMITE, with DOTA being an exception.
Valve has also fine-tuned matchmaking with two new changes:
Full parties can now match against any opposing team and are no longer required to match against a full party of 5 in ranked.
Adjusted matchmaking tuning allows finding a game as a full party faster.
Valve’s decision to allow players to match against parties 2,3 or 4 players will also introduce many unbalanced games in order to help players find matches faster. These changes will be monitored by the developers and might be tweaked/removed upon feedback gathered.
Through the official patch notes post, Valve stated that these new changes are ‘experimental’, and it remains to be seen whether the feature would remain in the game permanently. DOTA 2 fans can take full advantage of the forfeit feature, which is scheduled to hit live servers on July 7, 2022.
