Yeah, its annoying, but is it actually violating any rules? Just curious.
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No, it’s not.
It’s not reportable, and it gives blizzard more money.
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I wish it was, and it absolutely should be. Will it ever happen, however? Nope.
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Throwing to get a lower rank is, having multiple accounts isn’t
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Starting a new account and playing to your normal rank- no.
Starting a new account and artificially keeping it in a lower rank, yes.
Is it scummish in either case?
Also yes.
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No it’s not, throwing is tho, so go after the throwers and you’ll be ok
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Not on console. Sony and Microsoft say you can have as many accounts as you want and Blizzard has no say in the matter
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You dont need throw for take low rang.hello world
Alt accounts are not against the rules however manipulating the match maker is. So if you create another account and play naturally allowing the matchmaker to catch up with you it isn’t against the rules. If you create a new account and occasionally throw games to manipulate the matchmaker in to keeping you in a lower ELO than you belong then it is against the rules.
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Who and how will decide that player is a smurf or not?
It’s pretty easy to tell. Are they rolling players at level 5? Smurfing is another form of cheating, so it should be against the rules. However, smurfs make up a large percentage of active accounts these days so it’s not going to happen. A small indie company like Blizzard needs every cent they can possibly find.
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If you suspect, report. Blizzard has faith in their matchmaker and report system 
Smurfing in terms of sabotaging games by throwing to get to lower ranked games? Yes.
Smurfing as in playing normally on an alt account? No.
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Is that English or JavaScript?
The Terms of Service are irrelevant since the report system is automated. Report them and they will get suspended.
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There is so-called Strike Team which manually review reports.
Technically no. There’s no rule against simply playing against someone worse than you.
However, throwing is a reportable offense, and all smurfs have to throw in order to continue smurfing. Otherwise they’re winning games they should be winning and therefore aren’t smurfing in the first place.
Take care of throwers, and you’ll take care of smurfs right along with them.
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Blizzard enjoys them Smurfbucks way too much for it to be against the TOS. I’m surprised they don’t start each match with an ad for buying another copy of Overwatch.
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Why do you believe that to be true?
This isn’t 100% true though.
Smurfing is a grey area. In order to smurf you need to do something to get placed that low in rank. This mostly involves hard or soft throwing.
THROWING however is against the rules thus reportable and bannable.
Also there are people that will multibox new accounts up to lvl 25. Play all 6 accounts in comp to throw and get low placement then turn around and sell those accounts to people who do want to smurf. We all know this is against the Battle.net account ToS.
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