Jul 13, 2023
If a player who has control of another player's permanents in a multiplayer game, what determines if the other players get their stuff back when the stealing player loses the game?
It depends on how the cards entered the battlefield. If the owner of the card put it into play and then it was stolen with Mass Manipulation or the like, then it will go back to its owner as the control changing effect ends. If the player leaving the game put the card directly into play with something like Etali, then they're the default controller of the permanent and so it has no one to go back to and thus is just exiled.