Almost all gaming titles in the market have to deal with different versions of in-game problems. Online multiplayer games fight cheaters, bugs and toxicity on the daily. Yet, when it comes to ranked and ladder play, players have to face different obstacles. One of these issues are smurf accounts.
Players who have reached high levels in their original accounts open a brand new account and get an easy win by coming across the matches of players who are new to the game or low level players. In doing so, they not only reduce the enjoyment of the game for the real players of that rank, but also cause them to lose points. Smurf accounts are widely used by streamers to create more engaging content by downright flexing on opponents who are outclassed and outgunned.
Riot and Valorant devs have finally decided to address the issue.
Smurf accounts ruin lower ranks
VALORANT is another game that suffers from smurf accounts. Since Riot Games’ FPS title is free-to-play, it’s easy for players to create a new account from scratch and jump straight into the ranked queue. For this reason, the number of low rank smurf accounts is increasing day by day.
Riot Games announced a new smurf detection system in Patch 5.01 to solve this problem. The main purpose of the new system is to analyze the performance of smurf accounts and bring the new account to the player’s original rank faster than it should be. Thus, players with smurf accounts will spend less time at lower ranks. The system will also give players an opportunity to jump plenty of ranks quickly if they really focus hard on their placements.
Smurf or not, you can jump ranks easily now.
Smurfs need to play more unrated to play competitive
In addition, Riot has also already made changes to the requirements for newly created accounts to enter the competitive queue. Now, fresh accounts must reach at least level 20 to play ranked and have 10 wins in unranked games. This prevents players from creating new accounts whenever they feel like it and jumping at low ranks.
Reaching level 20 takes a lot of games played in a very grindy and underwhelming queue. As a result, boosting services and lvl20 account selling has skyrocketed.
According to Riot Games, testing of the new “smurf” system began on July 11 for North America only. The company hasn’t shared information about when the new addition will hit other servers. It was also said that smurf detection will only apply to new accounts. It is unknown what will happen to the smurf accounts that are currently available.
On paper, Riot Games’ move is a good step to prevent high-level players from playing at a low rank. Since the new system’s measurement is performance-oriented, players who perform higher than expected or average will be automatically detected and will start climbing the ranks one after another.
On the other hand, the system also needs improvement. Especially for players who play at low ranks as a 5-squad smurf team, it is not very difficult to overcome this system and stay at the desired rank for a long time. Riot Games should prevent smurf accounts playing as a team as the next step.
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