I think smurf accounts should be banned along with mains. There is no reason for a higher ranked player to be playing comp in lower ranks. It should be a straight up ban. Do not let people use obvious VPN IP’s to connect.
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If you ban by IP then when IP’s are moved and stuff if the IP of a banned player goes to like, a college campus, for example, no one there could play Overwatch. Smurfs are like 1 in 20 games. Some people are just good. 90% of golds-plats are just really inconsistent and can look like they are smurfing when they are in the zone.
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Well, that would be terrible and outs my idea of IP bans. BUT the smurfiing is freaking annoying.
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Their current system is a hardware ban, which bans people by the unique hardware number thingy. I think its specifically the wifi card, but if your wifi is built into the motherboard it would be there. So, you can essentially pay for a unban, although it is tedious.
VPN is a wonderful tool when it comes to ip bans. The last I knew is that they also don’t do hardware bans.
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There is not a single Triple A game that would ever ip ban because of the reason stated above. Only like, minecraft servers ip ban.
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Yea but you could just replace the wifi card, no?
Thats what i mean by pay for a unban… getting a new wifi card.
I mean, this wouldnt unban accounts, it would only enable you to buy a new account and play it. If you look up MaximilianMus, he is a troll (hes hilarious) who got hardware banned, doesnt matter what or whos account he is on he is banned within 1-2 hours.
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Yea but I know there are people out there buying stolen accounts for like a few bucks or less. I mean, it’s really not that hard. Wouldn’t even hard wiring your PC fix the “hardware” ban?
He wasn’t hardware banned but he was caught because he streamed using his smurf account and they do actively keep tabs on streamers, especially if they are well known. They have said that they can also ban by payment methods meaning if you use the same debit card to pay for another copy of Overwatch with the same card the account it is setup with will be banned.
His accounts are donated by his viewers a lot of the time, and he only live streams Fortnite these days, never saw him do a OW live stream.
So, is it not allowed to have multiple accounts? Or maybe I just really don’t understand the difference between an ult and a smurf? Because to me all this talk seems like if you have multiple people playing from one family, they’d get banned??
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Then why not ban accounts by credit card? Most copies are bought digitally these days and it wouldn’t be hard to spot cards with 4-6 copies purchased. Sure, you might have the occasional family that has multiple copies but that could easily be vetted.
No way are smurfs only 1-20 accounts. Blizzard announced 40 million copies sold earlier this year. No chance that they have even half that in active users globally. Don’t forget that new accounts make up the bulk of the revenue Blizzard makes from the game. Loot boxes don’t come close and neither does OWL.
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The legends say Maximilianmus was supposedly hardware and IP banned
wont ever happen … jeff stated almost two years ago that the offical thought on smurfs are they are not that big of a deal …
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Exactly and this whole thread is a joke lol
Hardware ID would be better. Its not so easily fixed. Sure they could switch to their laptop but not that many people run around with expensive computers and expensive laptops its usually one or the other.
I would love curbing of smurfs because I am so tired of getting destroyed in QP by obvious GM players with nutty aim and salty people from lower who cant win their ranked games so come to QP to get to 25 to crap on lower players for “fun” then crap on people in ranked in their placements.
Max is a special case and there would probably be a few similar but a large majority wouldnt bother. be happy with how many we can get instead of trying to stop them all at once because it wont work. Doesnt work with cheaters, trolls it wont work with smurfs. So just a hardware ban would work, i.e hardware ID; Account limit 1
nope. you can buy multiple copies on one credit card and give them out as gifts …
i would say that new copies make up a good part but loot boxes are where the bulk revenue comes from with merchandise following closely… its been reported that most of blizzard net revenue comes from micro-transactions …those are in-game purchases (OWL skins and emotes, loot boxes, etc…)
why would they ban extra money from same person…get real dude.
This is part of the problem. Also, anytime you buy a copy as gift it’s labeled as such on Blizzard’s end. Don’t forget you need to add personal info when making or receiving a copy.
Sorry but loot boxes (at least in OW) don’t make much money. Overwatch hit 40 million copies sold on it’s third year. Doubling what it was from year two despite falling public interest. Virtually none of those are new players. Especially when the players benefit more from starting fresh with a new account.
Players buying an extra account even at a discount is more than what most people are spending on loot boxes for OW. The OWL certainly brings in money but the fact they’re hiding content behind OWL paywalls also points to the fact that the current loot box revenue model isn’t working.
Hell, loot boxes are getting classified as gambling now. A big reason why Blizzard wont address smurfs is because they bring in massive revenue that makes up for how little loot boxes have been making. Even the OWL struggles to sell season passes. What does consistently sell is alt accounts…