It’s apparently gotten way easier to get out of Bronze rank in League of Legends, and the numbers show that the low tier has gotten 40% smaller over the course of the past year in both North American and European regions.
On EUW servers, player distribution has seen Bronze players go from 26.42% of the total to 15.38% since September 2017. Similarly, that stat has gone from 25.44% to 15.20% on NA servers. Silver in both territories has gone up by about 6%, and Gold has increased by about 4% in the same timeframe.
This was first noticed on Reddit by Zhieyen, who compared stats on OP.GG along with archived versions courtesy of the Wayback Machine. You can see the full distribution at that link, but the question of what exactly is causing the change remains.
Most of the people in that Reddit thread anecdotally note that it’s far easier to get placed into Silver than it has been in the past. Take it all with the grain of salt you’d usually place on internet comments, but some players report going 0-10 in placement matches and still getting Silver. Of course, they also report purposely throwing those games, so read it as you will.
It’s worth also noting the overall decrease in player numbers. EUW has gone down by 25% and NA has decreased by 8% in terms of players tracked at OP.GG. That shouldn’t matter when we’re looking at a distribution of players in each rank, but it could be that the truly bad players are dropping the game at a faster rate than everyone else. It’s impossible to say for sure without knowing the precise effects of any MMR changes in the meantime.
Still, you have reasons to feel even worse about your League rank with these stats in mind. If you’re higher tier, you’re part of a less exclusive club. If you’re down in Bronze, well… there’s always next season.