Unfortunately yes. It’s the same thing as cheaters. You can’t ban someone just because they’ve been reported as cheating without absolute proof because the moment you start having false positives and banning legitimate users you will have a pretty big problem on your hands.
You can always measure something with probability, but probability isn’t exact. There is no solution that can algorithmically detect a smurf with 100% accuracy. And without one, you risk banning legitimate users.
Well the other flipside, and benefit against a true smurf account is that the account gets to share gold/skins.
However the account also shares Disciplinary Reports
Mostly it is people throwing down from higher ranks. So, ‘smurf’ is a bit of an odd term.
Both of the smurfs I had were true smurfs though, just enough levels to get into comp, and obviously not meant to be in the rank they were.
Most smurfs are NOT subtle in their throwing. You see people with 30+ games on a hero and have a 1% win rate, a 90% win rate on another, you know what is going on. That is pretty easily detectable.
You’ll only catch the stupid ones, but, that is a bulk of them.