Next planned LoL bounty changes should mean “less snowballing,” devs hope

Riot Games is trying yet another method to slow down League of Legends gameplay with several end-of-season bounty changes designed to make sure there's "less snowballing" in Summoner's Rift matches.

The changes, which Riot game designer David "Phreak" Turley shared on YouTube as work began for the next October patch, will be made heading into the 2025 LoL Season. This mini-rework will see bounties no longer fully reset after a champion dies. How bounties are calculated will also be changing somewhat, with value now based on how much gold a champion has earned or given away. It was previously based entirely on kill streaks, death streaks, assists, and creep score.

Wider objective bounties will also see several changes, including each team's bounties "turning off quicker" and Gold, Turrets, and Voidgrubs all weighed more heavily in the bounty algorithm. In turn, experience will have less of an impact to the code, though it will still be a small factor.

"Player sentiment is the game's a little bit too snowbally," Phreak admitted, "so we're hoping to err on the side of caution... which should see good results."

As he shared the changes, Phreak was very clear about why Riot has pulled LoL bounties back into the lab ahead of the game's fifteenth season: They're simply too "unintuitive" in most regards and that makes a bad gameplay experience in high and low Elo alike — and players have warned Riot that.

"We want bounties to loom over your head less," Phreak explained, adding a lot of the changes focus on helping gamers understand why they're getting a comeback opportunity. All modes will also now be unified for the same reason.

"It doesn't really matter how complex bounties are under the hood because we're not going to tell you exactly how they work but they are meant to be intuitive in the sense that when they show up it makes sense that they showed up. We want players to see these bounties and think, 'Yep, there's a bounty now, that makes sense to me.' The rules need to be clear."

The exact changes being made to LoL bounties are as follows.