If there are two things that make games infinitely less enjoyable, they’re players who cheat and players who disconnect before the end of a multiplayer match. Evolve player ‘King’ currently sits at the top of the leaderboard with over 150 wins and 0 losses as the Goliath – all achieved by disconnecting before the end of a game.
As it stands, Evolve doesn’t punish players for disconnecting during a game – it doesn’t subtract experience, and doesn’t count as a loss; in fact, it actually counts as a win. This is precisely how King climbed to the top of the Leaderboard, by disconnecting from games as soon as they’re defeated.
One Steam user posted a thread in Steam’s Evolve forum calling King out on their actions, but it was quickly deleted, and only a screenshot remains.
Another user posted a more conclusive thread that’s still up at the time of writing, as well as screenshots through out a game with King, complete with the moment King disconnected after losing.
King present at the start of the game:
King present with incredibly low health:
King leaving immediately after loss:
Players across the Evolve community are up in arms over this abuse of the system, and are pleading with Turtle Rock Studios to fix the issue, with multiple suggestions to list the number of disconnects beside win/loss ratios.
This situation highlights the larger issue of players disconnecting to maintain clean records or to annoy other players, all with little-to-no consequence. It will be interesting to see how Turtle Rock Studios tackles this issue, considering how vocal the community is.