Dota 2 pros face matchmaking hell after Valve bans smurfing ValveDota 2 Pros have found themselves under Valve\u2019s ban hammer thanks to the company\u2019s new hardline policy on smurfing. Smurfing is the practice of high MMR-rated players creating alternative accounts to artificially lower their MMR ranking. It\u2019s a practice that is widely frowned upon amongst the community. Valve recently came down hard on the practice last year, banning around 90,000 accounts. While smurfing negatively affects pub games, many Dota 2 pros are unable to play outside of scrims without a smurf account. Now, some pros are waiting over an hour to find a casual game. \u201cAre we allowed to play together outside of tournament games and team practice?\u201d Gaiman Gladiator\u2019s Captain, Melchior \u201cSeleri\u201d Hillenkamp, asked on Twitter. Tagging in Valve\u2019s official Dota 2 account, too. Dota 2 pros are obviously among the game\u2019s highest-rated players, which means many of them struggle to find matches in public games. As the matchmaking system is designed to place you with players of a similar skill level, Dota 2 pros are having to wait hours to find a full team and opposition with a high enough MMR. This has been causing them quite the headache if they ever want to play outside of official scrims and team practice sessions. Pro player\u2019s smurf accounts have come under the hammer already too \u2014 including Artour \u201cArteezy\u201d Babaev, whose smurf account had around 7000 hours of play. Former OG player and two-time TI winner, Anathan \u201cana\u201d Pham, was the first player to comment on this predicament back in December last year. According to him, even unranked matchmaking was problematic for pros. But Valve doesn\u2019t seem sympathetic to the problem. This means pro players who create smurf accounts or share accounts with others to play in pub games with friends or solo run the risk of getting hit with a VAC ban on their main account. This is exactly what happened to Steven \u201cStingeR\u201d Vargas \u2014 during his match against Thunder Awaken in the South American Qualifiers for DreamLeague Season 22 no less. While there\u2019s no place for smurfing in Dota 2, hopefully Valve can find a place for pro players in the game outside of the tournament system soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dota 2 pros face matchmaking hell after Valve bans smurfing ValveDota 2 Pros have found themselves under Valve\u2019s ban hammer thanks to the company\u2019s new hardline policy on smurfing. Smurfing is the practice of high MMR-rated players creating alternative accounts to artificially lower their MMR ranking. It\u2019s a practice that is widely frowned upon amongst […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}