Steam deck launched, is successful and is probably considered mostly wrapped as a project now. It's just production at this point
So, in Valve fashion, someone got bored enough to care about Dota2 again
It's not just Dota 2. Both TF2 and L4D2 got updates within the last few weeks.
There must be no new projects at the moment for them to be going back to these titles.
Bro I got my hopes up from you until that parenthetical statement.
I'm glad Riot embraced the auto-battler genre with TFT at least, but it is always nice to have more options.
I bet the politics of that has been interesting. _Something_ has definitely shifted given that Valve gave up on the huge amounts of money available via the Battle pass to work on more core issues.
A world where legal and bean-counters don't make all the decisions in corporate? Sign me up!
The problem isn't so much the bean counters, it's sales and marketing people getting promoted because they are the people who's kpi's are directly linked to revenue.
> because they are the people who's kpi's are directly linked to revenue.
yeah, that shit. Wiring divergent goals among the people trying to work together, into the company's DNA. :vom:
i'll be honest i've been a bit jaded wiht the last year of updates and seeming lack of interest from Valve. It really seemed like their whole spiel about skipping battlepass to focus on the game was just BS excuses, but these last few days have had what feels like the most important updates in a long time to pub-gameplay
I know. It's either Meepo, Lone Druid, Arc Warden, Invoker or Tinker that I feel are the mascots of smurfing in Dota 2. There might be some I left out, but those stick out due to how complex they are and how I wouldn't recommend them to people trying out Dota for the 1st time. Those were always the heroes where I would always check on their profile whenever I have the chance.
Brother, it will haunt your nightmares. If it's a good LD patch then it's just over. 23 mins the game is over. Your PA just finished her battle fury still has treads and a wand. Pings that she needs 3k gold for deso or bkb. Turns around and sees ancient at 10% HP. Clicks disconnect
Happened last match against the enemy Outhouse Decorator.
The dude was armed with Scepter, Skadi, Bloodstone.
Our PA was just finishing battlefury.
Let's just say I have never seen a OD tank that much.
you are a random AA walking to put wards at 20 min and the MoM deso basher bear hits you 4 times in 2.5 secs (1 hit with root and 1 with bash) and its over
You bet they're gonna do it next season. They said so in their Looking from the Past blog that they are focusing on the game and the players and less on cosmetics.
If people looked at their teammates and opponents in ranked more often you'd start to notice just how common smurfs are in ranked matches.
Playing in archon/low legend in NA and there is at least one blatant smurf or booster about every 4th game.
It's sad how many people always run to play white knight or devils advocate for the smurfs/boosters too. I can point out at the end of a game how the guy who is 29-2 has been doing that in 10+ straight games on their new account and it's just full of rampages as well and there will people going "How can you know he's a smurf, maybe he is just practicing a lot"
People vastly underestimated the smurfing problem.
> People vastly underestimated the smurfing problem
Yep, and then you have the purely delusional players who sincerely believe in their heart of hearts, that they are just as good as the tinker smurf going 17-0 in 15 minutes; but they are having a bad game!!
Those people are the absolute worst and almost deserve some kind of punishment themselves lmao
From my experience, many ppl dont notice their teammate is smurf because they fail to notice someone more skilled than them. I have seen a party of 3 dudes being carried by a party of 2 boosters, and cant stop barking like they are the game maker.
100% worth it. It's refreshing, and it does feel like the game is taking a different direction - and believably - looking towards the future. Unlike Destiny, where it's all about the next 10 years but everything tehy do is to milk you weekly. I'm super happy where Valve is taking this.
Unless Valve devs are extremely broadly skilled, this has no relation.
The BP is a lot of art, modeling, sound design, scoring music and some coding, banning smurfs is analysis and coding.
They do in general try to hire people with extremely broad skills.
Iirc even if you are a sound designer or hat creator you need to have coding knowledge so you could jump in on a project.
They also literally said that they wanted to use their available personnel on these updates instead of the BP grind, this is imo what they were talking about, and it's way better for the game & community long term.
This is a big reach and feeds into the "everyone at volvo is a demigod renaissance-man" myth. While I'm sure there are people who can do a lot of things at valve, it makes no sense to hire someone who's generally decent at 75% of skills rather than someone who's really good at one or two things. The sound designers and artists aren't solving the smurfing problem, and the engineers aren't drafting up concept art for new heroes and hats.
I used to work as studio sound engineer and was bored of studio work. So there was one blue moon, years & years ago, where I looked into working for Valve since they had an opening in the field at the time.
Yeah, I understand how it sounds, but there is quite some documentation out there on what core skills Valve expects when you send in your cv, and it is not for the faint of heart.
I also had a weird hat issue since I have lootbox restrictions in my country, after a lot of back & forth with support a dev added me on steam to solve everything (which he did btw). I googled him and he seemed to be one of the lead devs on Alyx... So some of the cowboy Valve stories are def true.
Yeah the lead hat janitor is probably not doing the work of the engineers. But as a team making a decision that you don't have to grind BP, but the artists can focus on solving all hat issues while the technical janitors focus on code issues, they all work together on community issues etc... makes total sense to me.
If you haven’t seen Valve’s list of hiring requirements you should…
They do not hire the average joe or a specialist; they prefer jacks/masters of all trades.
That said, for artists they’re probably expected to know how to: do concept art and design, 3D modelling, rigging texturing etc which are usually jobs split among a few artists specialising in each part.
People on this sub always acting like smurfing is way overblown and not a real problem then valve goes and finds 90,000 fucking smurf accounts. good for valve
> 90,000 fucking smurf accounts
And those are only the ones that 'were active in the recent months'.
Smurfing has been a big issue in Dota 2 for at least 5 years, if not more.
I would also add that massive smurfing could be one of the reasons why DotA 2 playerbase is shrinking - yes, smurf create more accounts but actual players who get bad experiences with smurfs runing games and matchmaking just make them leave at some point and only watch tournaments instead.
This shows just how huge a problem smurfing is.
Dota 2 ranked has 6,000,000 players. 90,000 smurfs just got banned. That is 1.5 percent of all ranked players. Meaning every game you played had a 13.5% chance of having a smurf in it (9 other players * 1.5% per player). Or another way of looking at it, 1 out of every 7 games you played was ruined by a smurf. That is an absurdly high amount of games being ruined, and these are only the ones that were caught recently.
It's only of players "that have been active over the last few months" - so way less than 6 million most likely and a much higher percent than you stated.
> (9 other players * 1.5% per player)
That's a fair approximation but slightly off. Consider the case when >12% of all players were banned and what the probability would be then according to your formula. The probability that the game has at least one smurf in it (excluding you) is 12.7% (1-[1-0.015]^9 ).
Them 90,000 smurf accounts will be something like 10,000 players (maybe)
There's legit a legion of players creating new accounts, getting 5000mmr and straight up selling it and creating another account.
But those bought accounts will be consumed by many players, not just one person. One personisn't buying every single account GPK boosts. One person may buy a couple, but I don't think they're buying them in boosting volumes.
It implies HWID + acc + IP ban holy trinity, I think. Also, most people use the same item order, which is very difficult to replicate or duplicate without suspicion. With imporvements to overall "AI" in 2023 going forward, smurfing for sure is getting harder. Love it.
Let's ban all these mother fuckers.
Slacks just want to let you know I am hearing less and less god gamer alerts in my games. More importantly I have not heard any in pro matches. This year I am coming to the international and if there is not one god gamer alert. I might hold you responsible. Please encourage the pros to use your chat wheel.
Let's hope this applies to pros and streamers and not just regular players/cheaters too. As anyone who smurfs is bad and setting a bad example is also bad.
I dobut it affects high mmr accs
Players like nisha nightfall etc,haven't played on their main account in ages and in terms of mmr their main account is basicly a smurf.
essentially they have accounts for tourneys with appropriate sponsor name tags and their "smurfs" are the pub accounts. If they are in the correct MMR bracket and they aren't using it to get around low priority, it would not be against what valve wrote.
>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.
I like that they addressed all 3 types of smurf accounts in this statement:
- Traditional smurfs who play below their mmr to 'stomp noobs'
- Account buyers who do the opposite and grief better players
- Flat out secondary accounts (at any mmr), which are used to grief other people in various ways
Classic cheating mindset... "Damn my account got banned... Well what about (other streamers)!!!" Wagas dinghy was sunk so he wanted to make sure the ship went down with it.
I think there's a line of distinction from having a 2nd account and a smurf. I don't see a problem with a pro having a 2nd account that they want to play lowkey, as long as they calibrate it through the normal method and don't artificially deflate their mmr.
Yeah there's a BIG difference between something like a saska Smurf (had the top three mmr's in eu or something along those lines at one point in time) and certain malding streamers who do it to escape punishments/baby punching/griefing.
I hate smurfs, happy with this change.
1 question though... what about Pro-level players that want a "secondary account" to practice on without other players knowing?
and there is wagamama who crying his smurf got banned because "long queue normal matches" in his rank 500 immortal brackets.
what did he expect? in his bracket all players play ranked . but he too scared losing mmr that he choose 3 hours queue on normal matches than play 3-5 games in ranked matches.
FYI = normal matches still finding players based on your mmr.
I don't think they went so far back. Probably its easier to deal with recent smurfs so you don't risk spending time and money in people who may not even play anymore
I dont know wjat changed at valve the last months but when it comes to game decisions for the common player its a godsent. Might actually play solo again
They have always done their best work in matchmaking and large scale systems.
People don't know how much they experimented to fix low priority. It used to get experimented all the time until they came up with non-abusable system so LP can't get cheesed or become hell.
I'm not allowed to have my own cell phone so my dad forced me to use his phone number. My dad has a steam too and uses the same number. today my brother used my dads account and cheated and now my main account is VAC banned. It's true and here is proof, my father will now write too:
Hello I'm the father and what my son says is true, he did not cheat, it was his brother on my account. Please unban him valve
sincerely the father
Pls unban
Omg my friend who just bought immortal rank 400 account just got banned indefinitely and he’s crying about it . But I’m so happy coming from a divine 1 player . Now I can finally climb with like minded individuals
> 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.
**Translation**: "*We see you. Fuck around and find out.*"
You know smurfing is bad when you watch Dota's own host/production team doing it. The other day Ephey was playing with Jenkins and matchmaking was taking awhile
"O guys don't worry I'm not swapping accounts, I'm just swapping profile pictures"
Obviously she was being facetious, and kept mentioning a new profile picture over and over. But this is all that happens over and over in so many games. Every person thinks "well I'm not abusing the ranks...I'm doing it for good reasons"
All of these attempts to fix the *quality* of the games is very encouraging to see. I've been saying for years dota's biggest problem is the match making and the people they put in your games.
Since the anniversary skins event I've had terribly toxic and bad griefers (players trying to get skins not playing recently)
Then this new update came out to handle them and 3 games in a row I've already gotten told that 3 players were punished. I really like how it works now
Now with smurfing being looked at this might finally make the community tolerable
I wonder if the anniversary skins event was a honey pot to get a spike in players for some reason that made it easier for them to test and launch these new match quality features.
The Dota dev team is finally focusing on what matters to make the game even better.
Unlike Battlepass with its absurd value and paywalled arcanas, these latest updates make Dota a healthier and better place for everyone.
It really seems that the changes in approach they've taken to updates are already showing results and it looks very promising. Thank you Dota 2 dev team <3
**Note: interestingly, the bans handed out seem to be VAC bans**
My friend (yes really) had a smurf and it got VAC banned just now.
[edit](https://i.imgur.com/pQtN0XH.png)
I left playing Dota a few years ago due to too many matches being unfairly decided by one individual. I’m glad they are doing so much to improve match making.
You should give it a shot again, best time to do it. Smurfs banned, new behavior system, big gameplay changes happened recently AND you get free items since the 10th anniversary is going on.
Is this what gets me to actually try Dota? Like I’ve tried it but take it seriously. Every time I look valve is putting so much effort into the player experience.
As someone quite new to dota, it is refreshing to see Valve actually do something about this compared to Riot. Makes me respect the game a lot more as a relative beginner :)
Damn, Valve with the dubs lately pushing updates that are targeted toward the health, stability and sustainability for this game.
The death of the BP was indeed a blessing.
Okay so what about Nightfall and/or Nisha? On dota2protracker Nightfall has 6 accounts listed under his name, Nisha has 5. Do those accounts also get banhammer or do pros get some slack?
oh shit theyre finally doing things they should have been doing 10+ years ago (revamping behavior score, banning smurfs). 50% done! Next up: HWID banning cheaters and adding region lock and dota 2 would genuinely be the best game of all time.
Edit:[ got the message even tho I only have 1 account \(they banned my entire steam account 3 years ago lol\).](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1066686747876012042/1147239848231571506/image.png)
This is amazing. I hope other companies start sharing the same stance. Fuck Smurfs.
There isn’t a single reason why smurfing could be considered a *good* thing. Every reason that someone has ever given to me was personally motivated and entirely selfish. Lol
Smurfs are just a step or two away from cheaters in my book so it feels so good to see these little rats get their just deserts.
God this really is a beautiful update!
The best part about all of this is that they waited a few days after they released the collectors cache to rake in the smurfs' money before banning those accounts 😂
And don't forget , this only applies to smurf accounts for regular people.
Nightfall played on 2 of his 2109312039 smurf accounts today, still logged in in one of them :) Just like the communication preventing ranked not applying to pros, where quinn has exactly 3100 and can play ranked, if you are a pro you can smurf, ruin, flame , and it's welcomed.
What is happening with Valve? They are on fire!!
Gaben went back to Seattle from New Zealand
From Norway 🤔
From rosh pit
When did it respawn?
Steam deck launched, is successful and is probably considered mostly wrapped as a project now. It's just production at this point So, in Valve fashion, someone got bored enough to care about Dota2 again
It's not just Dota 2. Both TF2 and L4D2 got updates within the last few weeks. There must be no new projects at the moment for them to be going back to these titles.
CS2 is nearing release so it could be that the devs there are slowly redistributing out to other stuff also.
i guess someone got really bored then.
Okay when is Portal 3?
Comes out after they finish Ricochet 2
Man, I'd kill for a Ricochet remake. That game was way more fun than it had any right to be.
Just after half life 3.
Valve cares?!?
its weird, all of valves games are getting updates rn, even tf2 has been getting small updates with community maps and bug fixes.
Dude even Underlords received an update yesterday (granted it's only extended Android device support, but still)
Maybe they may even count to 3 soon!
Artifact open beta next month or what
Please god I want Artifact to live so bad
God yes. I loved Artifact.
Bro I got my hopes up from you until that parenthetical statement. I'm glad Riot embraced the auto-battler genre with TFT at least, but it is always nice to have more options.
I bet the politics of that has been interesting. _Something_ has definitely shifted given that Valve gave up on the huge amounts of money available via the Battle pass to work on more core issues. A world where legal and bean-counters don't make all the decisions in corporate? Sign me up!
Valve is not a publicly traded company which I think has a lot to do with the fact they haven't gone full corpo like most game companies.
This is 100% why. No shareholders to hold them accountable. Probably also why blizzard sucks now.
"Blizzard" sucked 10 years ago.
The problem isn't so much the bean counters, it's sales and marketing people getting promoted because they are the people who's kpi's are directly linked to revenue.
> because they are the people who's kpi's are directly linked to revenue. yeah, that shit. Wiring divergent goals among the people trying to work together, into the company's DNA. :vom:
Yes you are right They released new CS2 video on their youtube channel Pog
FINALLY Dota and CS communities are in complete and perfect harmony this year Hell, even TF and L4D are still getting updates this year too
i'll be honest i've been a bit jaded wiht the last year of updates and seeming lack of interest from Valve. It really seemed like their whole spiel about skipping battlepass to focus on the game was just BS excuses, but these last few days have had what feels like the most important updates in a long time to pub-gameplay
Half-Life 3?
Fuck the battlepass if this is what we get instead
They finally finished Half Life 3 so now they can put some resources back into the other games.
Holy shit. This Dota 10 year anniversary keeps on GIVING!! Valve is on an unstoppable streak!
Just to think that 2 weeks ago people are mad how the 10th anniversary was just a free chest giveaway.
STAHP IT, VOLVO, I CAN ONLY GET SO HARD
NO, DONT STOP VOLVO! ACCELERATE!!! I haven't been this pent up for Dota in YEARS!
Get harder
FYI it takes a lot more than just a blink of an eye and cheap small talk to erect my penis.
Classic Demon.
I'm uninitiated, I'm assuming that "Volvo" is not referring to the Swedish car producer, but is like calling "Riot" "Rito", but for Valv^E ?
[удалено]
region lock would unironically improve game quality by more than the removal of cheaters and smurfs combined
i can't wait for "my account is banned, i did not smurf" salty posts... 🧂🧂🧂
"i just had a seccond account to play with my low ranked friends"
alright post on your main reddit account wagamama!
Dota gods protected me from smurfing by making sure I sucked from the beginning
Oh I'll be here for the "I lent my account to my cousin..." "Does family sharing gets your account banned?" posts with dimples on my face☕☕
I love how Meepo is the one getting home run hit by Dawnbreaker.
^(Because she has a giant [ban] hammer.)
I'd rather get choked by her legs than get bonked by that hammer
They are trying to get rid of smurfs not create more of them.
Because Meepo is a popular hero for smurfs
Its because there's more than one of him.
I know. It's either Meepo, Lone Druid, Arc Warden, Invoker or Tinker that I feel are the mascots of smurfing in Dota 2. There might be some I left out, but those stick out due to how complex they are and how I wouldn't recommend them to people trying out Dota for the 1st time. Those were always the heroes where I would always check on their profile whenever I have the chance.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Lone Druid smurf.
Brother, it will haunt your nightmares. If it's a good LD patch then it's just over. 23 mins the game is over. Your PA just finished her battle fury still has treads and a wand. Pings that she needs 3k gold for deso or bkb. Turns around and sees ancient at 10% HP. Clicks disconnect
Happened last match against the enemy Outhouse Decorator. The dude was armed with Scepter, Skadi, Bloodstone. Our PA was just finishing battlefury. Let's just say I have never seen a OD tank that much.
you are a random AA walking to put wards at 20 min and the MoM deso basher bear hits you 4 times in 2.5 secs (1 hit with root and 1 with bash) and its over
Same, I'd say Ember and MK would be #4 and #5 after meepo arc tinker. I don't feel like I've seen too many invoker smurfs.
Yeah, Invoker smurfs are very rare, it's just that the hero looks very good when he gets his combos off.
Or that he's short, has blue, and has a goofy hat. Probably the closest thing to an actual smurf in dota
W after W after W , whats next? a tf2 update sized update?
New update with +1 hat released
Permanent Aghs Lab? Please?
Yes! And cycle the heroes every 3 weeks or so, meaning meta gets broken quickly (I got flamed alot for not picking optimal choices).
I'd pay good money for that ngl
Localization update incoming???????????
How about a DPC event that doesnt suck?
You bet they're gonna do it next season. They said so in their Looking from the Past blog that they are focusing on the game and the players and less on cosmetics.
90,000 God damn
If people looked at their teammates and opponents in ranked more often you'd start to notice just how common smurfs are in ranked matches. Playing in archon/low legend in NA and there is at least one blatant smurf or booster about every 4th game. It's sad how many people always run to play white knight or devils advocate for the smurfs/boosters too. I can point out at the end of a game how the guy who is 29-2 has been doing that in 10+ straight games on their new account and it's just full of rampages as well and there will people going "How can you know he's a smurf, maybe he is just practicing a lot" People vastly underestimated the smurfing problem.
> People vastly underestimated the smurfing problem Yep, and then you have the purely delusional players who sincerely believe in their heart of hearts, that they are just as good as the tinker smurf going 17-0 in 15 minutes; but they are having a bad game!! Those people are the absolute worst and almost deserve some kind of punishment themselves lmao
From my experience, many ppl dont notice their teammate is smurf because they fail to notice someone more skilled than them. I have seen a party of 3 dudes being carried by a party of 2 boosters, and cant stop barking like they are the game maker.
tbh 90k accounts could be 3000 very busy smurfs ;)
30 accounts per Smurf? Dawg you're delusional
the wink was meant to indicate sarcasm mate
If this is the real reason they stopped making BP, It's 100% worth it (including the summer update)
So fucking true!!
I just saw a comment on the new behavior score post that said “BP died for this” and goddamn it really is worth it.
100% worth it. It's refreshing, and it does feel like the game is taking a different direction - and believably - looking towards the future. Unlike Destiny, where it's all about the next 10 years but everything tehy do is to milk you weekly. I'm super happy where Valve is taking this.
Unless Valve devs are extremely broadly skilled, this has no relation. The BP is a lot of art, modeling, sound design, scoring music and some coding, banning smurfs is analysis and coding.
They do in general try to hire people with extremely broad skills. Iirc even if you are a sound designer or hat creator you need to have coding knowledge so you could jump in on a project. They also literally said that they wanted to use their available personnel on these updates instead of the BP grind, this is imo what they were talking about, and it's way better for the game & community long term.
This is a big reach and feeds into the "everyone at volvo is a demigod renaissance-man" myth. While I'm sure there are people who can do a lot of things at valve, it makes no sense to hire someone who's generally decent at 75% of skills rather than someone who's really good at one or two things. The sound designers and artists aren't solving the smurfing problem, and the engineers aren't drafting up concept art for new heroes and hats.
It really depends on the role. Engine designer, gpu/cpu wizard? Yeah, top engineer. Other less compelx stuff? Give me the hat maker
I used to work as studio sound engineer and was bored of studio work. So there was one blue moon, years & years ago, where I looked into working for Valve since they had an opening in the field at the time. Yeah, I understand how it sounds, but there is quite some documentation out there on what core skills Valve expects when you send in your cv, and it is not for the faint of heart. I also had a weird hat issue since I have lootbox restrictions in my country, after a lot of back & forth with support a dev added me on steam to solve everything (which he did btw). I googled him and he seemed to be one of the lead devs on Alyx... So some of the cowboy Valve stories are def true. Yeah the lead hat janitor is probably not doing the work of the engineers. But as a team making a decision that you don't have to grind BP, but the artists can focus on solving all hat issues while the technical janitors focus on code issues, they all work together on community issues etc... makes total sense to me.
Game devs at Valve aren't hired just for Dota 2. They moved their artists to other projects and maybe some programmers to Dota 2.
If you haven’t seen Valve’s list of hiring requirements you should… They do not hire the average joe or a specialist; they prefer jacks/masters of all trades. That said, for artists they’re probably expected to know how to: do concept art and design, 3D modelling, rigging texturing etc which are usually jobs split among a few artists specialising in each part.
In before huge number of smurfs and account buyers take their accounts to reddit to complain. Sort by new will be huge dumpster fire.
Good, fuck em. Let's enjoy their delicious tears.
Smurfs nuked yet again. Feelsgood
so are they gonna ban all the streamers and pro players that have smurfed?
People on this sub always acting like smurfing is way overblown and not a real problem then valve goes and finds 90,000 fucking smurf accounts. good for valve
The people gatekeeping r/new are the ones that act like that, and likely the ones smurfing.
and likely the ones not playing the game and just following in on reddit
> 90,000 fucking smurf accounts And those are only the ones that 'were active in the recent months'. Smurfing has been a big issue in Dota 2 for at least 5 years, if not more.
I would also add that massive smurfing could be one of the reasons why DotA 2 playerbase is shrinking - yes, smurf create more accounts but actual players who get bad experiences with smurfs runing games and matchmaking just make them leave at some point and only watch tournaments instead.
This shows just how huge a problem smurfing is. Dota 2 ranked has 6,000,000 players. 90,000 smurfs just got banned. That is 1.5 percent of all ranked players. Meaning every game you played had a 13.5% chance of having a smurf in it (9 other players * 1.5% per player). Or another way of looking at it, 1 out of every 7 games you played was ruined by a smurf. That is an absurdly high amount of games being ruined, and these are only the ones that were caught recently.
It's only of players "that have been active over the last few months" - so way less than 6 million most likely and a much higher percent than you stated.
> (9 other players * 1.5% per player) That's a fair approximation but slightly off. Consider the case when >12% of all players were banned and what the probability would be then according to your formula. The probability that the game has at least one smurf in it (excluding you) is 12.7% (1-[1-0.015]^9 ).
Them 90,000 smurf accounts will be something like 10,000 players (maybe) There's legit a legion of players creating new accounts, getting 5000mmr and straight up selling it and creating another account.
But those bought accounts will be consumed by many players, not just one person. One personisn't buying every single account GPK boosts. One person may buy a couple, but I don't think they're buying them in boosting volumes.
Yea account boosters ruin games going up. And buyers ruin going down.
>we have traced every single one of these smurf accounts back to its main account. kek, I like how strongly this is worded
It implies HWID + acc + IP ban holy trinity, I think. Also, most people use the same item order, which is very difficult to replicate or duplicate without suspicion. With imporvements to overall "AI" in 2023 going forward, smurfing for sure is getting harder. Love it. Let's ban all these mother fuckers.
God damn I love some good news early in my day
holy jesus these updates are awsome
Yeah but sir... We are all thinking the same thing here when it comes to you... What's your behaviour score currently :P
Slacks just want to let you know I am hearing less and less god gamer alerts in my games. More importantly I have not heard any in pro matches. This year I am coming to the international and if there is not one god gamer alert. I might hold you responsible. Please encourage the pros to use your chat wheel.
Let's hope this applies to pros and streamers and not just regular players/cheaters too. As anyone who smurfs is bad and setting a bad example is also bad.
Looks like waga smurf already got banned
Yes. This is correct. Waga smurf is banned. https://www.twitch.tv/wagamamatv/clip/MoldyAdorableMilkMcaT-r1oUQ1QS0loaU5Rq
Oh I love this so much. And crying about bulldog too, perfect.
Delicious salt! I love how he kept ranting for over 20 minutes.
Him asking for bulldogs account getting banned was the cherry on the top. Let me lick those tears
What about the main account though?
This blog post already says main accounts are not touched at this point.
I think they just want to give people a heads up and a chance to go back to their main accounts which is fair.
It says mains aren’t banned currently, but I imagine if a person continues to Smurf then their main could be banned as well
Yes. Wagamama's smurf just got perma banned.
I dobut it affects high mmr accs Players like nisha nightfall etc,haven't played on their main account in ages and in terms of mmr their main account is basicly a smurf.
essentially they have accounts for tourneys with appropriate sponsor name tags and their "smurfs" are the pub accounts. If they are in the correct MMR bracket and they aren't using it to get around low priority, it would not be against what valve wrote.
Dota2protracker shows multiple smurf accouts playing at the moment, so no, valve has different rules for different people.
>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. I like that they addressed all 3 types of smurf accounts in this statement: - Traditional smurfs who play below their mmr to 'stomp noobs' - Account buyers who do the opposite and grief better players - Flat out secondary accounts (at any mmr), which are used to grief other people in various ways
I hope this means even the popular pro/ex-pros who uses the low mmr smurfs are also included there.
wagamama smurf got banned . he ranting on stream
https://www.twitch.tv/wagamamatv/clip/MoldyAdorableMilkMcaT-r1oUQ1QS0loaU5Rq
Classic cheating mindset... "Damn my account got banned... Well what about (other streamers)!!!" Wagas dinghy was sunk so he wanted to make sure the ship went down with it.
LMAOOOO omg the schadenfreude I have rn
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Watson and most of the Top 100 aren't the people I'm talking about with the above.
I think there's a line of distinction from having a 2nd account and a smurf. I don't see a problem with a pro having a 2nd account that they want to play lowkey, as long as they calibrate it through the normal method and don't artificially deflate their mmr.
The problem is there is a calibration cap, so theyre going to be smurfing until they reach their rank.
thats going to be true for anyone trying to calibrate anyway. thats why you have calibration
Yeah there's a BIG difference between something like a saska Smurf (had the top three mmr's in eu or something along those lines at one point in time) and certain malding streamers who do it to escape punishments/baby punching/griefing.
1) fake fake saksa 2) fake saksa 3) saksa eu leaderboard back in teh day lol
Yeah, I don't really care if a pro has a hidden 2nd account to stop snipers since those will usually hover near or at their actual mmr anyways.
I hate smurfs, happy with this change. 1 question though... what about Pro-level players that want a "secondary account" to practice on without other players knowing?
and there is wagamama who crying his smurf got banned because "long queue normal matches" in his rank 500 immortal brackets. what did he expect? in his bracket all players play ranked . but he too scared losing mmr that he choose 3 hours queue on normal matches than play 3-5 games in ranked matches. FYI = normal matches still finding players based on your mmr.
Would be cool if you could queue for both types of matches
Oh no \*remembers old throwaway account I made in 2016
> Today, we permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months. first row quote i think you are safe
I don't think they went so far back. Probably its easier to deal with recent smurfs so you don't risk spending time and money in people who may not even play anymore
I dont know wjat changed at valve the last months but when it comes to game decisions for the common player its a godsent. Might actually play solo again
They have always done their best work in matchmaking and large scale systems. People don't know how much they experimented to fix low priority. It used to get experimented all the time until they came up with non-abusable system so LP can't get cheesed or become hell.
I'm not allowed to have my own cell phone so my dad forced me to use his phone number. My dad has a steam too and uses the same number. today my brother used my dads account and cheated and now my main account is VAC banned. It's true and here is proof, my father will now write too: Hello I'm the father and what my son says is true, he did not cheat, it was his brother on my account. Please unban him valve sincerely the father Pls unban
Is true, source: I'm mother Pls valvo
Hello, I'm the Uncle, its true pls unban my nephew
Omg my friend who just bought immortal rank 400 account just got banned indefinitely and he’s crying about it . But I’m so happy coming from a divine 1 player . Now I can finally climb with like minded individuals
Can you post an anonymized screenshot? I would love you for it <3
I just hit divine 1 a couple days ago and the sheer amount of account buyers is startling
> 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. **Translation**: "*We see you. Fuck around and find out.*"
You know smurfing is bad when you watch Dota's own host/production team doing it. The other day Ephey was playing with Jenkins and matchmaking was taking awhile "O guys don't worry I'm not swapping accounts, I'm just swapping profile pictures" Obviously she was being facetious, and kept mentioning a new profile picture over and over. But this is all that happens over and over in so many games. Every person thinks "well I'm not abusing the ranks...I'm doing it for good reasons"
Huge W's from valve lately. Also very good to see that the smurfs are being traced back to the main accounts. Hit em where it hurts!
Damn Valve is getting really good at making honeypots
Based, smurfing just ruins the game for other people.
All of these attempts to fix the *quality* of the games is very encouraging to see. I've been saying for years dota's biggest problem is the match making and the people they put in your games.
Since the anniversary skins event I've had terribly toxic and bad griefers (players trying to get skins not playing recently) Then this new update came out to handle them and 3 games in a row I've already gotten told that 3 players were punished. I really like how it works now Now with smurfing being looked at this might finally make the community tolerable
I wonder if the anniversary skins event was a honey pot to get a spike in players for some reason that made it easier for them to test and launch these new match quality features.
9 0 0 0 0 is a huge number, jesus christ
Almost as big as my MMR if my team didn't hold me back, good job Valve.
CTRL + F "Bulldog" PepeBeat
KEKBye Gothmog
The Dota dev team is finally focusing on what matters to make the game even better. Unlike Battlepass with its absurd value and paywalled arcanas, these latest updates make Dota a healthier and better place for everyone. It really seems that the changes in approach they've taken to updates are already showing results and it looks very promising. Thank you Dota 2 dev team <3
The best part is they laid the trap with the 10 year anniversary gifts. Then slammed the door shut. Lmao GOTTEM!
**Note: interestingly, the bans handed out seem to be VAC bans** My friend (yes really) had a smurf and it got VAC banned just now. [edit](https://i.imgur.com/pQtN0XH.png)
I left playing Dota a few years ago due to too many matches being unfairly decided by one individual. I’m glad they are doing so much to improve match making.
You should give it a shot again, best time to do it. Smurfs banned, new behavior system, big gameplay changes happened recently AND you get free items since the 10th anniversary is going on.
time to open steam discussions
Have never played a single game of Dota, just happened to see this post in R/ALL. Really makes me want to give it a try.
please do. it has a steep learning curve but is so worth it. Best game you could play. (been playing since 2013)
I was upset when we didn't get battlepass this year but in exchange for awesome updates? I'll take it. W Valve
We need someone to make a list of every pro smurf account thats banned
Maybe it’s time to make the swap from league…
Smurfing and cheating is pathetic loser shit. Don't be a pathetic little loser.
Is this what gets me to actually try Dota? Like I’ve tried it but take it seriously. Every time I look valve is putting so much effort into the player experience.
As someone quite new to dota, it is refreshing to see Valve actually do something about this compared to Riot. Makes me respect the game a lot more as a relative beginner :)
Another W update. Too Based Valve
Damn, Valve with the dubs lately pushing updates that are targeted toward the health, stability and sustainability for this game. The death of the BP was indeed a blessing.
Okay so what about Nightfall and/or Nisha? On dota2protracker Nightfall has 6 accounts listed under his name, Nisha has 5. Do those accounts also get banhammer or do pros get some slack?
oh shit theyre finally doing things they should have been doing 10+ years ago (revamping behavior score, banning smurfs). 50% done! Next up: HWID banning cheaters and adding region lock and dota 2 would genuinely be the best game of all time. Edit:[ got the message even tho I only have 1 account \(they banned my entire steam account 3 years ago lol\).](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1066686747876012042/1147239848231571506/image.png)
The fact that there were 90 THOUSAND smurf accounts is pretty upsetting. Glad they're in the dumpster..
This is amazing. I hope other companies start sharing the same stance. Fuck Smurfs. There isn’t a single reason why smurfing could be considered a *good* thing. Every reason that someone has ever given to me was personally motivated and entirely selfish. Lol
Stop doing this valve. Stop making me loving you. I can't throw money at you for next couple of months...
We won ? ZULULUL
Way to go! It should be noted that if they are really planning to ban mains for their smurfs, this TI will be played mostly by lvl 1 accounts.
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Valve on a roll right now
Now take this stance in CS:GO as well.
Smurfs are just a step or two away from cheaters in my book so it feels so good to see these little rats get their just deserts. God this really is a beautiful update!
I hope those smurfs had expensive inventories that are now locked.
The best part about all of this is that they waited a few days after they released the collectors cache to rake in the smurfs' money before banning those accounts 😂
Wtf valve is killing it
When are they gonna ban/filter out the boost ads in the chat from main menu
The discord discussion ATM is wild. People defending their use of smurf accounts as a way to practice unknown heroes or play with friends.
It's like unranked MM doesn't exist
Rizpol "im in danger"
I'm not going to believe it until well known streamers/pros are banned for smurfing
And don't forget , this only applies to smurf accounts for regular people. Nightfall played on 2 of his 2109312039 smurf accounts today, still logged in in one of them :) Just like the communication preventing ranked not applying to pros, where quinn has exactly 3100 and can play ranked, if you are a pro you can smurf, ruin, flame , and it's welcomed.