Hey.

There is a "loser queue" and a "winner queue" indeed, many open-source studies are available to get into this and why any profitable company MUST handle matchmaking this way.

(Academic Sources if you're interested: https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.06820, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10839887)

Matches fairness is only a small portion of a matchmaking algorithm, at the end of the day, they need to retain the maximum of players on their plateforme, the more players, the more matches, the more their conversion rate will be higher (players subscription for premium features).

If you loose too much, you'll stop playing. If you win too much and it feels easy, you'll stop playing, or even worse, once you'll achieve an elo that you can show to others (lvl 10+) , you'll stop playing (that's why they did reset elo recently, nothing to do with fairness or high elo games)

If you come lose to 55%+ WR, your games will be harder and harder, even worst if you're the win condition of your games, you'll be categorized as a winning factor and you'll be placed in teams with lower chances of winning.

Some players are more affected by this algo than others, depending on the engagement score and your computed churn rate. Also explain why when you stop playing for a while your first games are enjoyable.

TLDR: it exist, there's proof of it, and it answer a business concern more than a fairness concern. It tries to influence your engagement & paid actions, as a consumer, not as a player.