The conclusion that URF causes burnout is nonsense.

If anything, people leave after URF for two reasons: one, they specifically came for urf. Two, they were an active player prior, but find themselves not wanting to play anything but urf after it leaves. These, if anything, are the mote probable conclusions given the data curves Riot had provided prior. Now, if people were burning out and quitting, one would expect a rapid drop in player count DURING urf. That is not what is observed, and calling it “burnout” is intentionally misleading and places the blame on the players instead of on the comparative overall attractiveness of the gamemodes.

I know this is a bit of a late post on regards to urf’s removal, but I feel it is an important point to make. My conjectures as to why this is done include, but are not limited to: (A) a projection, whether faulty or unfaulty, by Riot employees that prolonged urf will lead to reduced profit (B) extra server strain caused by urf (C) a bet, may it be mislead or not, on Summoner’s rift and its viability as an eSport at large, and the fear that other competitive gamemodes with the same base game style might lead to a ‘divide and conquer’ style loss of popularity in League of legends.

Nonetheless, at the end of the day all I can really say for certain is that the misinterpretation of the data is bad statistics at best and false causality, purposefully misleading statistics, at worst.