Even if he is a legitimate “Alt account”, then he is ranking up on said alt account as intended. The same way everyone else is, he has no option to tick “i want this account instantly in GM”.
Smurfing is a term made for and only means, players who actively seek out unfair fights on purpose. The players that invented the word, was two high ranked Warcraft players, that had no one to play with, so they made new accounts, called themselves “papasmurf” and “smurfette”. Acted like they were new and bad players to fight vs newer unsuspecting players to then completely destroy them, usually starting the game out by making loads of mistakes on purpose.
In OW this is not an option since, the only thing related to this, would be deranking and throwing, both punished with bans.
Auto Banners are extremely flawed at this time, this could potentially ban people popping off at one game or ban newer players for playing extremely well. Or the team that keeps getting sextupleted is just bad and the genji is getting away with it. If you really want to get rid of smurfs, switch to heroes that counter genji, go Brigitte and prevent Genji from getting close. Go Moria for the autolock, or get better at the game.
I had to deal with smurfs to get to diamond, and every game has smurfs. Simply banning them wont solve anything and will probably get actual accounts banned too. If you truly want smurfs banned, Jeff and his team could try CSGO’s version of Overwatch where the community looks at clips of people playing the game to see if they are cheating or griefing, I’d much rather have this, but for high ranked players.
Yes CSGO is extremely toxic, but their version of Overwatch has been working well considering the community usually has more time to watch clips about smurfing/cheating/griefing than the developers. Yes, it is flawed but a good counter would be 3 people would see the same clip, and if 2/3 decide if they’re smurfs or cheaters, the person gets a warning or a ban.
Simplest answer is $$$$$.
Each smurf (I always wonder if it had a less cutsey name for it would it kerb it somewhat) has multiple paid accounts (PC, i don’t know how it works on console and frankly don’t care). As long as the cash rolls in they could care less. They say hey don’t see it as a problem even though players hate it and are vocal about it because the money coming in, in their opinion outweighs player concerns.
As a friendly reminder Game Director Jeff Kaplan has clarified that there is nothing wrong with owning an alternate account, but boosting and throwing is not permitted:
Realistically I don’t see any productive ways of killing off alternate accounts.
I’ve reported groups with “Looking to throw” in their name and have never gotten any response from Blizz about it, so I feel safe in saying that they could not care any less if they do it.
My personal opinion? I am not too fond of it because players are not trained and practiced team members like that of Blizzard Game Masters (Customer Service Representatives). Blizzard also does not want to implement such a program as they foresee complicated legal issues involved.
Hmm, that does make sense, I do like CSGO’s Overwatch since only experienced players get to use the system, and the fact that there’s a lot of them (which is also it’s greatest flaw due to them not being trained).
the money, its ironic that i saw a documentary about LoL a game i don’t even play, but it pointed out players who have been banned for smurfing.
They dont ban the smurfs because well, they bought the extra account. lots of players do in hopes of rating resets, if they banned them, that would halt some money which would not make some stock holders happy.
Exactly, I was recently accused of cheating on Widowmaker (in a losing match too) because I got play of the game and my shots luckily flicked to the targets three in a row. My scooped accuracy overall however was 38% for that match.
What legal issues? A few lines in an updated TOS and that’s a non issue. Blizzard just doesn’t want proof of how bad the smurfing/cheating/trolling problem really is in Overwatch.
Yeah, i’ve always had “fishy” moments in CSGO where I would hear the enemies footsteps and know where they went, so I would shoot at them, headshots and be reported, it always scared me a bit.
Actually there is going to be a panel upcoming at GDC 2019 that will be similar to the Play Nice, Play Fair BlizzCon Panel that will show steps Blizzard is taking to stop disruptive behavior in games. I think that will be freely accessible so I hope everyone takes time to watch it if and when it goes live.
Cause you have a name called “looking to throw” there is no evidence, that they have or are actually going to. That is why… Could just be kids having fun with memes…
Smurfs are much less of a problem than most people make it appear.
It’s often mostly used as an excuse akin to “omg hax” when someone is playing well. Or the comment of “throwing” when someone misses one shot.
If you have a smurf in every other game, then the only consistent factor in any given match is yourself and your own paranoia of smurfs.
Sure, there are smurfs, and the few times they are obvious, they’ll confirm your beliefs. But there’s many more times where it’s just a suspicion that is never confirmed, but you still treat it as confirmation because there is nobody telling you they aren’t smurfs. This is called confirmation bias, and people need to stop believing it.
The reason why they are not bannable is because there is no gamerule against having multiple accounts. In fact it has been explicitly allowed, for the sole reason that THROWING is against the rules, as well as BOOSTING.
Both of those can be reported.
And with that, smurfing becomes a non-issue. Any second accounts that play normally (even if they tryhard) won’t be an issue ever.
You don’t report smurfs for being smurfs. But you report them for abnormal behaviour, such as intentionally tanking SR so they keep a low rank to curbstomp noobs. Or if you see a group with 1 diamond and 2 low plats, it could be a boosting attempt.
Reporting people who simply play well for their rank is utterly ridiculous, because how else are people supposed to win matches and get into a higher rank? We all know the matchmaker is broken AF. Don’t blame people with a higher skillset for being put in a rank too low for them, unless you are 100% certain they intentionally tanked SR.
Gamerule against smurfing itself would be impossible to enforce too.
Smurfers who wanna smurf will just use a different email, different paypal, whatever, and they’ll be undetectable by whatever system is in place. Even if you prevented logging in with 2 different accounts on the same device, there will be workarounds for that with virtual machines. And you’ll notice that the complaints against smurfs won’t die down anyway.
Then you can also create a rule now, but it would be impossible to apply it retroactively to existing smurfs. Doing so would result in a massive backlash, and likely a lawsuit as it is basically making something illegal that was intentionally said to be legal. It is basically scamming people, and would be corporate suicide unless they reimbursed all of the alt accounts, which might be a financially unviable decision. So the problem will continue to exist anyway.
![:smiley:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
cause Blizzard be making Bank off them ![:liberia:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/liberia.png?v=6" ":liberia:")