DOTA 2, Valve’s MOBA, undoubtedly is one of the longest running and most successful games among the wide and changing range of titles in this category. It turned 10 years old last July, and during all that time it managed to maintain its current status in the face of increasingly tough competition. Thus, it is most often seen among the most watched and requested games on the platforms. It never got ahead of its main rival League of Legends, which is also older, but it did not let itself be overshadowed by the long and thick shadow of LOL.

So if we look at its numbers for which we can resort to SteamDB, we find that it is very unlikely to fall below a quarter of a million concurrent users, while daily highs that typically hover around 700,000 simultaneous players. These numbers are below its all-time record of 1,295,114 competitors set eight years ago, but still show us that ten years after its launch, the title is still attracting huge numbers of players every day.

That’s a positive for both players and Valve, sure, but It also has some negative consequences.and the larger the number of users, the more likely it is that some of them intend to act outside the rules set for the game. And this is especially problematic when we are talking about techniques that may be justified in some cases, but in most are used in an abusive way, which happens with the smurf (don’t worry if you don’t know what it consists of, I’ll tell you later) .

The fact is that Valve has been taking action against this for some time, and we found the latest on the game’s own website, which states that Valve has permanently banned 90,000 DOTA 2 accounts for smurfing. And it doesn’t stop there, as the company has said that it will soon take tougher measures and that it will also monitor the main accounts of those players it has detected using this technique (which is exactly where these tougher sanctions will arrive ). And that should be a little easier for you because, as we told you a few years ago, DOTA 2 started asking users for their phone numbers to prevent smurfing.

what is smurfing

The normal approach to games of this type is for each player to have one user account to use in both casual games and qualifying games, which are the ones that allow them to progress through the game’s categories and rankings. . However, it is common to find users who have two or more accounts, one primary and then one or more secondary accounts dedicated to purposes other than normal title development.

Within them there are some players who already have enough experience and who they decide to create a new account with which to pretend to be newbies. Matchmaking systems (the ones in charge of selecting contenders for each matchup) match these fake newbie accounts with those of players who are genuinely new to the game, meaning that Smurfs they play with a huge advantage that always translates into wins for them and frustration for new players. This can be done for a variety of reasons, from enjoying the quick leveling of win after win to simply annoying new players by trolling them.

Have two accounts in games like DOTA 2 It is not always, as I have already indicated, something malicious. The most classic example of fair use is the example of an experienced player who, after a long time, manages to convince his friends to join the title. In this case, you can use a lower level secondary account to play with them, although obviously you’ll use your greater experience in the title even then.