Unfortunately, you can’t currently do anything about Splatoon 3 matches ending early when a player disconnects. Almost everyone has experienced a match that’s ended as soon as it started because a player left the game. While there is a slight penalty for those who leave a match prematurely, you still have to go through matchmaking again, which is frustrating.
Can you stop players from disconnecting early in Splatoon 3?
When players leave a match early in Splatoon 3, you’ll get this message:
“One or more players disconnected shortly after the battle began. Disconnected players will be assigned a loss, but the battle will not count for players who remained connected.”
Usually, this message will occur when someone’s connection fails, and the game drops them while the match is loading. In that case, it’s irritating but not a huge deal. They get assigned a loss, and you can keep rolling without any effect on your stats.
The one thing we fear is that people will use this to troll other players. Many other multiplayer shooters handle this sort of thing by letting you play through the match without any stat gain or loss. Splatoon 3 is one of the only ones that just ends the match if someone drops out.
Hopefully, Nintendo will take a look at this issue, especially since it’s a fairly common occurrence. You can do your part to prevent it by making sure your Switch has a good connection.
