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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[–] Amir@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

Ahh thanks, that does sound really shitty to do.

[–] xNIBx@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You still need a valid phone number to play ranked games, so there is some limitation.

[–] simple@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Well yeah, but you can get a verification number for less than half a dollar usually if you know where to look.