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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[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

How exactly does smurfing work? I don't play Dota and the description on the page doesn't really help me understand

[–] Amir@lemmy.ml 17 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.

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

Ahh thanks, that does sound really shitty to do.

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 4 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.

[–] xNIBx@kbin.social 3 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.

[–] ExpensiveConstant@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Smurfing is knowingly and deliberately playing at the incorrect skill-level/mmr/elo. Most times, people will create or buy a separate account, that somehow has a lower mmr/elo attached to it to do this. You can 'play bad' or 'throw the game' for 50 games in a row and your rating will tank a lot, so that's a bummer to encounter as your new teammate randomly... Then this player can win a lot of games in a row playing as 'themselves' and completely stomp games all the way back to their 'true' mmr. Does that help explain it?

[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Yep I understand now! Thanks for the explanation. I don't get how that'd be fun unless the person just enjoys being an asshole...

[–] Zefjor@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

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?