- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- dota2@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- dota2@lemmy.ml
From the Dota 2 website:
Today, we permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months. Smurf accounts are alternate accounts used by players to avoid playing at the correct MMR, to abandon games, to cheat, to grief, or to otherwise be toxic without consequence.
Additionally, we have traced every single one of these smurf accounts back to its main account. Going forward, a main account found associated with a smurf account could result in a wide range of punishments, from temporary adjustments to behavior scores to permanent account bans.
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I don’t play DOTA2 but that’s some seriously great live service management. Smurfing in Overwatch2 drove me nuts (I’ve even given up playing the game). Constant leavers, toxic behavior, and no repercussions.
Tracking smurf accounts back to their main (likely by reviewing IPs as one account logs out and another logs in) is a powerful way to stamp out this behavior and deter people from smurfing in F2P games where having multiple accounts doesn’t cost a cent.
Smurfing prevented me from playing LoL and Dota2, impossible to get into a game when you can’t get off the ground, the opposition is made up of smurfs and half or more of your team as well, and you get shit on for trying to learn how to play.
That was my exact experience with the original Warcraft 3 mod to the point I’ve never bothered with MOBAs beyond Overwatch.
Up timing, but depending on data permissions upon download they may also have things like device fingerprints. Agreed on the service management though. Brilliant work.
This is such a great change. I wish league of legends would do the same. In lol it feels like more players have smurf accounts than not. Smurfs contribute nothing to the games and only ruin the experience for the other 9 players.
Playing in plat / emerald elo feels like each game is a complete landslide in favor of one team. I wonder if banning Smurf accounts would fix this issue and make games more fun
That’ll scare the smurf out of these mother smurfers
Wish they did this in Rocket League. I stopped playing because of all the smurfs. Shits annoying.
How exactly does smurfing work? I don’t play Dota and the description on the page doesn’t really help me understand
You’re an experienced player but create a new account to get matched against noobs. Since the game is free, there’s no cost to doing so.
In dota, there is a cost: you have to play 100 hours of unranked before you can play ranked. Honestly, because of this, while smurfing obviously still happens rarely, I don’t think I’ve seen any smurfs in my last 50 games of ranked, which is at least 30 hours of gameplay. I would assume you see more smurfs in unranked games, but since I’m not playing those, I don’t see them.
You still need a valid phone number to play ranked games, so there is some limitation.
Well yeah, but you can get a verification number for less than half a dollar usually if you know where to look.
Ahh thanks, that does sound really shitty to do.
Basically someone with a high matchmaking rating creates a brand new Steam account and installs the game, pretending to be a new player. They then proceed to stomp on the actual new players and just be generally as toxic as possible. After all, if that account gets banned, they can always make a new one.
Does this effectively mean that making a new account for any other reason is effectively against the rules in these kinds of game, because you’d start at the bottom rank, or is there some way of telling between an experienced player just making an alt or new account, and one specifically doing it for facing low ranked players?
If you play on a separate account specifically to play in a different skill range, then that would be smurfing. But if you play through the calibration games on that account to your best ability, then it should place you roughly where your other account would be within a handful of games.
Smurfing is when a player has a secondary account so they can play against/with lower ranked players. Imagine a chess grand master putting on a disguise and going to a beginners chess tournament
On chess.com smurfing is actually not permitted, but chess grandmaster can play on special accounts to do fun challenges and all of the elo is refunded to the players that they beat.
This seems like a reasonable approach but the smurfs have already ruined all the games prior to being banned. I wonder how difficult it is to prevent smurfing altogether? Doesn’t seem like it’d be easy at all.
Meanwhile, smurfs in CSGO/CS2
Look, I’m all about fairness…but why prevent people from colouring themselves blue and adding a white flappy hat?
