The amount of high ranked players currently streaming their “unranked to GM” journeys is ridiculous at this point. These players just roll teams in every game under the guise of “muh educational content”.
Why is this allowed? Not only are they promoting the scourge that is smurfing, they’re monetising it for profit as well.
Let’s look at Samito as a prime example. He has multiple smurfing videos on his channel and a group of followers who keep encouraging this behaviour because it’s apparently hilarious watching a team of gold players get demolished by a Top 500.
And the “educational” content? Yeah, throwing a tip or two into your stream doesn’t justify ruining the game for hundreds of people across multiple smurfing videos. Just watch the Sombra video: the biggest “tip” I took from that video is “be a Top 500 in a gold game”
Examples (there are dozens of these on his channel):
How in the effing hell is this acceptable, Blizzard?
These streamers are doing “Unranked to GM”, not Bronze. They aren’t throwing. They are playing on a new account and climbing out of lower tiers quickly.
2 accounts okay sure, going on your 6th account you’re just a scumbag. They know what is going to happen and what rank they get. They don’t need to play vs. New players to show how to play a hero either.
but like why do you care tho? you win some you lose some and if you’re good you’ll climb. i dont think they really “ruin” that many games when most people refuse to improve and blame other people.
They dont care about the playerbase. Like at all. They get the money from the pros and sponsors. If they would care about playerbase then they would do actions against the pro players and not apologize them if they threaten with leaving the game.
Im not exaggarating if i say that OW has the worst pro scene out of all of the games.
I guess it’s because alt accounts aren’t prohibited and they’re probably the only viable option for very high tier players to play with their friends. Even though I’m no GM in competitive I still have GM MMR in QP which means that when I play with me gold-plat friends we have to get absolutely destroyed for 3-7 games before we start getting games where we have a slight chance to win which is frustrating to a point where sometimes I don’t even feel like grouping up with them
Problem is that when I play Lucio with them the games are balanced but if I picked up Pharah/76/Hanzo I’d probably go something like 35-2 and get flamed for being a smurf and I can do that at any point in the game that I feel like. I can be playing Lucio nice and clean, then an enemy T-bags me and suddenly I’m an unstoppable force that carries the team
I’m pretty sure that the 2-2-2 role queue is paving the way for actions against smurf accounts since it makes the current need for alt accounts obsolete since roles will then have different MMRs which gives them more justification in punishing smurf accounts directly. This is just my guess though…
Jeff himself said that he owns alts and all of the dev team, along with the pros have alts on their own.
In theory the matchmaker will quickly put them against people of similar ability. (In theory.)
I honestly learn alot from Samito’s videos. He seems to be a more brutally realistic Jayne.
His Reaper, Doomfist, and Genji videos seriously helped my gameplay.
Many streamers are doing this but they are not starting in bronze by blatantly throwing. Most are starting in high gold/low plat anyways. All of them are trying and making educational videos/streams about particular heroes they are playing at that time. Yes it may be annoying if one of them is in a game with you in lower ranks but one single game isn’t going to disrupt you climbing if you deserve a higher rank.
Well, the top man himself mentioned in a recent stream with, I believe, Seagull, that they have a team ready (apparently) to identify and severely punish this kind of activity when it has been identified. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know, I have doubts. After all, smurfs = money = more profit. These smurfs also tend to be some popular streamers or content creators of which have had plenty of ad revenue and/or donations (well overpaid), some people enjoy this kind of entertainment even though it undermines the matchmaking system and ruins the game for those involved in the matches with a smurf.
The problem is identifying the fine line between whether someone’s actually deliberately playing worse (even slightly) than they usually do so they don’t place as high as they could/should, or whether placements simply decided that they should start from say… gold, anyway.
A smurf is someone losing on purpose to stay at a lower rank and destroying people.
Therefore a top 500 player blasting throw the low rank in a “unranked to GM” chalenge is no smurf. Even if he is destroying lower level players, he is doing so for a couple of matchs as he is forced to by the game.
And the video is indeed educationnal. you do not need to listen to advise. rather figure out what the guy is doing differently than you do at your rank. And no it is not aim only.
As an example I’ve seen a video of Dafran recently where he flanks a Hanzo in like “gold or silver” he start shooting at the guy and proceed killing him without his target even turning around. That say something about the level of awareness of the rank.
Before that he flank Rialto first and kill pretty much the whole team without anybody actually reacting to his prescence behind them.
If I were a silver player seeing those videos, I would just try to flank to see what happen.
blame the golds who sit there thinking how AMAZING AND COOL these videos are.
