League Of Legends Loses The Horribly Unpopular Dominion Mode

League of Legends developer Riot Games has decided to take the game’s not-so-popular Dominion mode behind the shed for a merciful sendoff. It seems like the mode simply isn’t drawing a crowd and, rather than let it flounder about, the team is doing away with it altogether later this month.

On the off chance you’re a fan of the Dominion game mode in League of Legends, you’ve got until Monday, Feb. 22, to get in as many matches as humanly possible. According to the official announcement, that’s when Riot Games plans to disable Dominion and remove the Crystal Scar from custom games.

In case you think I’m being harsh in regards to the unpopularity of the Dominion mode, Riot is reporting that fewer than 0.5 percent of players actively dive into Dominion matches and, of those, a small percentage are actually bots. In other words, dang-near nobody is playing Dominion.

According to the announcement, Dominion was launched within League of Legends over four years ago to serve as an alternative, fast-paced version of the capture-and-hold gameplay the game has become so popular for.

According to the user, L4T3NCY, the team though that the streamlined mode would give seasoned players something different to sink their gametime into while serving as a nice, quicker introduction to the game for newcomers. The post goes on to state that the team at Riot have learned through years of experience with LoL that alternative game modes “work better in short cycles rather than as standalone queues.” In other words, there’s a chance Dominion might pop back up for a short time in the future but, as of February 22, it’s getting axed as a permanent option within the popular MOBA.

It’s nice to see Riot working to unify its community more. Everyone wants more modes, but offering too many options can fragment your players and make it more difficult to get matches going. As for Dominion, queues were getting obnoxiously long as players had to sit around waiting for fellow adventures to join matches. As the stats show, it wasn’t a huge pool to begin with.

MMOs and even games like Destiny have figured out that similar seasonal options work best. Rather than offer a dozen game modes at all times, thus dividing who is playing where, many games offer just a handful of super popular modes and rotate those extra activities in on a regular basis. The Sparrow Racing League in Destiny, for instance, was a good distraction for a couple of weeks. If it was still around right now, though, how many people would still be running those same two maps?

As a final parting gift for Dominion’s loyal fans, anyone who logs 100 matchmade wins in the mode by the time its axed from League of Legends will receive a special icon that won’t be made available anywhere else. So, yeah, better get to playing!