Valve’s been going fairly onerous on Dota 2 this yr, and the newest is concentrating on those that begin recent accounts within the free-to-play recreation in order that they will play simple video games and stomp rookies. Valve has additionally traced the accounts again to their predominant accounts, and says that any longer “a predominant account discovered related to a smurf account might lead to a variety of punishments, from non permanent changes to conduct scores to everlasting account bans.”
Smurf accounts, for these of you who do not know, are brand-new accounts utilized by skilled gamers to keep away from taking part in at a correct matchmaking degree—or to only cheat, grief, troll, and be broadly poisonous with out everlasting consequence.
For a lot of gamers in aggressive, free-to-play video games, and for mobas specifically, smurfing has been an enormous drawback. It is extraordinarily irritating to get pleasure from taking part in in opposition to individuals who’re both profoundly extra expert than you or simply there to make the sport worse for everybody else.
That is the second huge smash for Valve this yr, having knocked out 40,000 accounts in a day for dishonest earlier this yr. To attain that Valve laid a entice for utilizing third-party software program that accessed information not normally learn by the sport consumer: They made secret information that solely the cheat software program would learn, then banned accounts that had learn it.
“Whereas the battle in opposition to cheaters and cheat builders typically takes place within the shadows,” mentioned Valve on the time, it needed “to make this instance seen, and use it to make our place clear.” I count on that is a lot the identical motivation behind this explicit smurfing ban wave. This positively applies to professional gamers as effectively—in March, Valve banned a whole professional crew for dishonest.
Although it is a decade or so outdated, Dota 2 continues to be very a lot alive. Earlier this yr it obtained a large replace that made the map 40% larger alongside a slew of different updates and tweaks that we famous would possibly as effectively make it Dota 3.
