I have so many problems with this and the first one is people who have a good game could get banned, for example I play mostly lucio support and this widow couldn’t hit me and she said I was smurfing I could have got banned for just playing and doing good also some people are just naturally good and the big one there is no and I mean no way to tell if somebody is a smurf or just good from blizzards perspective.
The problem is that a lot of your peers just keep buying NEW accounts instead of playing on their regular ones. A lot of high ranked players just start over and over in low elos.
They are bending the rules for their lolz and keep stomping low level players.
ONE bypassing talented player is no problem for the gaming experience, if it happens occasionally. But at this point, nearly every remaining player has at least 2-3 accounts. One for try hard gaming and at least one for trolling/smurfing.
So instead of an occasional annoyance, it’s a permantent problem to the middle ranks. Buying new accounts is so cheap, people don’t even bother with active smurfing/throwing anymore. If they get too high, they just buy another acc and start all over.
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There is a lot of smurf apologisists, but on the contrary boosted players (by friends or other means) face 100% opposition.
Both ruin games just as badly, just saying. The times you cry about some boosted player in your REAL rank, think back how many times you ruined low sr games on your smurf 
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because it makes Blizzard money…I don’t think many people buy loot boxes anymore but tons and tons of accounts are being bought and sold…that’s their whole business model at the moment…
Its not cheating because it’s making them money…a very deranged way of doing business
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Smurfs on console don’t make them any money.
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because that’s how they make a lot of money, duh
It can’t be confirmed fully from just this. I actually have an account on XBL with like no leveling on it and owned the xbox for maybe 4 months. If I turned that on and played on Xbox I’d be playing with my almost diamond border experience and gold-diamond level skillset.
Not to mention that everyone who is new to overwatch isn’t brand new to shooting games.
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It is a bannable/reportable offense because it falls under Blizzard’s definition of cheating, specifically “unfair advantage”.
Incorrect. See above.
I’m sorry but are you saying being better at the game than someone else is an unfair advantage? What could possibly be a fair advantage, in that case?
I can see how deliberately throwing games to derank is gameplay sabotage. That’s pretty cut and dried. But let’s be reasonable here.
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I’m sorry but are you saying smurfing is just being better at the game than someone else? Because you know full well it is not just that at all.
Theres a difference between what I call unintentional and intentional smurfing. Intentional smurfing is when you play on a 2nd account and INTENTIONALLY go into low elo and just wreck everyone (possibly). Some people smurf unintentionally. This means that they are playing on a 2nd account and whatever rank they get, they work with it. Yes, they play like they would on their main. However, this is type is not bannable. Honestly, Blizzard doesn’t do a good job by moderating smurfs. All in all, smurfs are merely just 2nd accounts.
That’s one half of it, yes. The other half, the part that actually violates the rules, is the deranking aka throwing aka gameplay sabotage
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because it’s not their fault MM doesn’t know where to place them
this is my new account, Blizz brought me all the way down to silver (somehow) where I was destroying people, before i eventually got my winning streak back up. it was stupid. i was 3000 on my main. i got to see first hand that it’s not really the smurfs’ fault.
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It’s not always the “Smurf’s” fault would be more accurate. While a lot of people get placed incorrectly initially, whether on an extra account or when swapping platforms (console to pc and vice versa), there are also people that intentionally play below their rank, either by throwing or by buying accounts from people. Those two actions are what is against the rules and what needs to be targeted to actually deal with the problem smurfs while limiting false positives.
It’s all about the MONEY!!!
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That’s one aspect of it. The other is playing in a rank that’s far below your actual rank as that affords you an unfair advantage over those actually at those lower ranks, and, according to Blizzard, anything that gives an unfair advantage is considered cheating.
Smurf accounts are free to make on consoles.
Yes, that was a very bad design flaw. On pc you have to buy game license.
I disagree that it’s an unfair advantage, otherwise every single time anyone wins a game that game violates the rules because one side had better players on it which means someone had an unfair advantage.
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Smurfing for me is not cheating. I have a high Plat account and a Bronze account. Guess what, no matter how good I play on my bronze account I always get Bronze from my placements. I play a few games and dont care about climbing so I end the season in bronze, new season starts, do placements again and guess what, BRONZE. LOL this so stupid. Placements should hard reset every season and pull from QP MMR as a starting point. On my bronze account I notice I am with and against high plat and low diamond players consistently when I solo play in QP. Ive even been matched with Masters in Arcade 1V1.