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.

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.

  • xep@kbin.social
    51·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Clbull@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      For Korea and China, probably quite easy.

      Both regions require you to register for the game using a residential ID due to strict internet laws in those regions. China’s are so notoriously strict that the kind of toxic degeneracy you’d see on the European or North American servers would probably nuke your social credit score or land you in prison if you tried to pull it there.

      As for the West, the only companies from my experience that genuinely ask for personal details beyond a username, email address and password are those that host shoddy Korean MMO’s and have notoriously bad internet security. Valve have tried to address smurfing in the past by requiring accounts to register phone numbers before they can play Ranked, but this can easily be bypassed with cheap burner phones and other services.

      • slumberlust@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        China’s are so notoriously strict that the kind of toxic degeneracy you’d see on the European or North American servers would probably nuke your social credit score or land you in prison if you tried to pull it there.

        Got any resources to back this up? I have a hard time imagining a culture where cheating is the norm alongside one that ruins your life if caught cheating. One of these things can’t be true.