As a normal Overwatch experience, my team was being farmed on the respawn for 3 minutes long without any chances. Enemies had 3 smurfs in their team, we had 0.
When my team asked why do they do it, he confessed without any fear to be banned, that he does it to sell the account afterwards because it costs a lot.
Screenshot: Forum Moderator Note: Screenshot with callout removed
From this I understand, that smurfing, boosting and selling account is allowed and not punished in any way. They are not even afraid to confirm that in public chat.
Depending on how you define boosting and smurfing, they may be considered allowable activities. Generally, they involve shady practices that violate the ToS.
Selling an account is completely against the rules and is considered a big no-no despite someone’s lack of fear of repercussions.
xhelper, you tried to look that smart and sarcastic with your reply, but you failed. Completely.
Come to the city hall or a police department. Do you see an advertise on the bulletin board of people offering services of fax fraud and murders?
Yet in Overwatch there are a lot of groups created by people selling their accounts. I often see bronze accounts selling for 50$ or GM accounts selling for even more right in the game itself. And they are not banned, removed or blocked. They can successfully be there for multiple hours, until the account is sold.
Think of it like people that drive over the speed limit. Tons of people do it without ever getting a ticket. Some people brag about it. There is a lack of fear in society about joining in on the practice amongst most people so long as they don’t go overboard with it.
In the end of it all, it’s still against the rules. The people that do it are open to punishment as soon as the authorities in place decide they’re tired of it.
I’m not trying to look smart, you’re assuming something here again.
Nothing good comes from assuming the worst in people, well assuming good of someone can be bad too so i can 100% say that assuming things is one of the reasons why threads on these forums exist.
City hall or a police department?
I mean, if you’re going to say my analogy was bad… then this really must suck.
That would mean that the City hall / Police department = Sites overseen by Blizzard.
The sites where you buy accounts from are unrelated to Blizzard, so your analogy is completely incorrect in this case.
Those things would be listed somewhere else, if you want to know who is commiting tax fraud then some underground information broker. Hitmen and so on (even though unrealistic and on most sites usually fake) can be hired on the darker site of the web.
It’s not like you’d hire a hitman from www.hitmak.gov.uk right?
I mean if you’re going to complain about my analogy then at least make yours logical.
A. Blizzard doesn’t have to say over these sites where accounts are sold.
It’s a lengthy legal process to get a site taken down… so that approach is a possibility yet too slow.
B. If Blizzard were to look through these sites and ban all the accounts listed there, it could result in false bans. Some accounts might not have been accessed but still have been put up as a listing. Blizzard can not identify whether or not these accounts have actually been breached. (And no, if Blizzard were to check the history of every account it would be a waste of time. It’s not worth checking every account on the site to just ban them… they’ll return much faster than that so a solution like this is useless)
C. You can’t easily detect whether or not is playing above or below their actual rank. Even if a player is reported in-game it’s hard to detect this because a player could just be good or actually bad. It can be a lengthy Customer Support process which most cases don’t have enough evidence to give out a proper verdict. So that makes it even harder.
Behavior that intentionally detracts from others’ enjoyment (such as griefing, throwing, feeding, etc.) is unacceptable. We expect our players to treat each other with respect and promote an enjoyable environment. Acceptable behavior is determined by player reports and Blizzard’s decision, and violating these guidelines will result in account and gameplay restrictions.
Creating an account and then not trying your best is throwing, smurfs are account that plays below the actual rank of the user.
Smurfs are in violation of this rule, therefore it’s bannable.
Prohibited Commercial Uses: Exploit, in its entirety or individual components, the Platform for any purpose not expressly authorized by Blizzard, including, without limitation (i) playing the Game(s) at commercial establishments (subject to Section 1.B.v.3.); (ii) gathering in-game currency, items, or resources for sale outside of the Platform or the Game(s); (iii) performing in-game services including, without limitation, account boosting or power-leveling**, in exchange for payment**; (iv) communicating or facilitating (by text, live audio communications, or otherwise) any commercial advertisement, solicitation or offer through or within the Platform; or (v) organizing, promoting, facilitating, or participating in any event involving wagering on the outcome, or any other aspect of, Blizzard’s Games, whether or not such conduct constitutes gambling under the laws of any applicable jurisdiction, without authorization.
This shows that account boosting (aka levelling to GM) just to sell the account is also prohibited.
So you were just assuming… right?
I mean, if you really wanted you could’ve checked yourself yet you didn’t.
The problem with assuming instead of looking for what is and what isn’t allowed is that it causes much-unneeded chaos, which could have been prevented.
TL;DR: Hard to identify accounts, smurfs and selling accounts is not allowed.
In-game punishments can be fixed if Blizzard decides to hire more Customer Support Agents.
I dont really get it. He was smurfing to sell account? It doesnt make much sense. People are deranking accounts to sell them, not climbing to sell them. Deranking is not only easier but it also is paid better.
No it doesnt, when Chipsa made new account he even dropped to silver at one point. He absoluelty played below his rank. Doest it mean he was throwing? Of course not. There has to be intent proven. You have to prove that player did it on purpose. And thats where it is core of smurf problem. Blizzard cant just recklessly banning people without evidence that it was done on purpose.
Well since we’re also talking about selling accounts in this thread… i’m talking about that.
They’re going to automate XP farming in QP modes which might ruin that gamemode.
You mean level up using bots? Thats already being the case, there are certain individuals using bot 6 stacks to level up and then throw to bronze 500. I know this.
Lets for a moment pretend that devs do care about that and they decide to actualy deal with these bot groups.
Bot group need 17 Hours to level up to 25. That will definitely generate some reports, then you need few hours to derank roles to 500. Also more reports, at this point you already have chance to be banned for the first time which is 1 day(hilarious i know)
But as you already have that one ban, its a lot easier to accumulate longer one by more reports. That would usualy not be the case as bot group is finished at that point but imagine to level up to lvl 50 instead of 25, thats like another +30 hours or more.
So bot stack need to be running 47 hours instead of just 17 just in QP leveling. Good luck not being completely account banned before you make it. Or actualxy discovered by blizzard system for running bot 6 stacks for many many hours.
Some of them are allowed, some of them are not, let me break it down for you:
Smurfing
is allowed, there is no rule that says that you can’t own multiple accounts with big sr differences between them
BUT deranking is not allowed, so if someone intentionally throws to get a smurf account back to a lower sr that’s bannable
Boosting
is allowed, if it’s done in a stack and the account owner plays on the account that is getting boosted. If you can get 5 gm players to stack with you as a bronze player to get you to a higher sr (and if you don’t need to pay them for it), that in itself wouldn’t break the rules
BUT account sharing is not allowed, so if the gm player plays on the bronze account that’s a 90 day ban for the account (for the bronze player)
Selling accounts
is not allowed, there’s no BUT here well I guess I put one here anyway
Well i guess that’s fair to say, but only if devs were to care.
There are plenty of high leveled players who have been hacking from the start and who haven’t been actioned yet.
Well that’s a different issue, though i think fixing the smurfing problem can be quite hard. We do want the anti-smurf measures to not affect the general community after all.
The first thing is an alternative account, the term smurf is used to refer to players who throw.
Paying to get boosted is agains the rules, this is mentioned within the EULA.
Playing with friends is fine but just so you can rank up? That’s pretty much against the rules.