Reddit is ablaze with League of Legends players demanding Riot do something about the proliferation of smurfing.
A Riot employee going by Riot_Siraris replied to the post, ultimately agreeing it was a problem.
Siraris noted that the company is aware of the problem and are "working on it"
League of Legends players recently came together on Reddit to demand that something be done about the amount of smurf accounts in competitive lobbies. One gamer explained that smurf accounts are “by far the most toxic players” in the entire game, leading to a lot of frustrating interactions and unsatisfying matches.
While the original poster seemed concerned about the toxicity of players using smurf accounts, many felt that the integrity of the game was the main concern. Having someone pretend to be a lower skill level to get easy wins makes the match unbalanced.
“It’s something that I wish Riot addressed,” wrote one League player.“If Riot doesn’t want a smurf queue, they need to be punishing these accounts faster.”
Riot Addresses Smurfing
To the surprise of the original poster on Reddit, a Riot employee going by Riot_Siraris became quite active on the thread, ultimately agreeing that smurfing must be addressed.
In Riot Siraris’ initial reply, the League of Legends insider explained that the team is working on addressing this issue.
They wrote: “Yea, this type of experience is horrible, and we're working really hard to mitigate this type of behavior in all areas of the competitive experience. I can't talk specifics, but there are some things coming in the near future that will start to act on these types of players who just want to ruin everyone's experience.”
Siraris added that Riot is aware of the smurfs and are currently “working on it.”
Unfortunately, no specifics have been shared just yet but it sounds like the implementation may be sooner rather than later. In a separate reply, Siraris said that players will “start to see benefits later this year.” Consistent improvements, however, will happen over the next few years.
“It feels super bad to play against people who aren’t at a similar skill level to you and we want to solve that,” they explained, “but it’s a highly complex problem and we don’t want to launch something half-baked that will introduce even more chaos into the system.”
What is Smurfing in League of Legends?
The most common use of the word “smurfing” is to describe a League of Legends player who created a new account in order to play against low-level players. This is often done so high-level players can compete alongside lower-ranked friends or to grind up the ladder again.
Is Smurfing Illegal in League of Legends?
Smurfing is technically not allowed in League of Legends — or any game. In Riot’s Support page on smurfing, the developer states that there are anti-smurf measures in place. If a smurfing player gets through this, they risk getting banned from the game and from tournaments.
The page reads: “We don’t endorse it because it can ruin the game for other players, like getting stomped by a smurfing player in Bronze. Tackling it on a massive scale is difficult due to the number of players in League and the ease of account creation — in most cases we won’t proactively remove smurfs from the game.”
The developer adds that they are “actively looking” at how to solve this issue in competitive modes. For now, direct action is taken against proven smurfing cases. This can sometimes include punishing the player’s main account.
What does Riot do about it? Smurfing in Valorant: A practice that once sparked controversy but is now navigated adeptly by Riot Games, ensuring that players are neither strictly penalized nor banned for utilizing smurfs accounts.
The page reads: “We don't endorse it because it can ruin the game for other players, like getting stomped by a smurfing player in Bronze. Tackling it on a massive scale is difficult due to the number of players in League and the ease of account creation — in most cases we won't proactively remove smurfs from the game.”
Earlier this year, we implemented Automated Smurf Detection to adjust smurf account MMRs. The experiment was successful, leading to a significant reduction in matches with a smurf in them that resulted in stomps.
Today, we center our attention on the hot-button topic within the gaming community – 'Smurfing in League of Legends'. A term used to describe high-level players creating secondary accounts to compete at lower ranks, it has drawn mixed feelings among the player's community.
Typically, smurfing involves distributing the cash obtained through illegal means among multiple individuals, known as "smurfs," who then make deposits into various bank accounts at different financial institutions.
Smurfing is not against the rules in LoL. This is the problem. But it answers the question asked in the title. Valve bans smurfs because it's against the TOS, Riot does not ban smurfs because there is no rule against it.
One day, one of them gets bitten by a Purple fly that turns his skin jet Purple, reduces his vocabulary to the single word "gnap!", and causes him to go angry and berserk. He bounces around and bites other Smurfs on their tail, which turns them into evil Purple Smurfs as well.
"Part of [Smurfs creator] Peyo's creation is that there's one female Smurf in the village. We really wanted to stay true to Peyo's original creation, and the fact that there's 99 Smurfs and one girl is part of the lore. We didn't want to just say, 'Let's throw another girl Smurf in there, just because. '"
The Smurfs (French: Les Schtroumpfs; Dutch: De Smurfen) is a Belgian comic franchise centered on a fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest.
We collect info from third parties to help us identify from where you're using the Riot Services (like your approximate location based on your IP address).
Riot doesn't track VPNs but identifies players by their IP addresses. If Riot detects you are connecting from multiple IPs, they might think that you're sharing your account, that it's hacked, or that you're using a VPN.
If you are a high-rank player who is using a second account and you gain abnormal scores like 30/0/0, then there is a very good chance that you'll be positioned in a Smurf Queue. The K/D rate is the other element that the game uses to determine whether or not you are a smurf.
It's called smurfing due to two very good players in a game called Warcraft II. Players would simply avoid playing them if they saw their usernames, so they created new accounts to combat this, choosing “PapaSmurf” and “Smurfette” and the term has stuck since.
Smurfing = cheating? Smurfing is lame, but it's not cheating. just because something is prohibited on faceit doesnt automatically mean it is cheating... According to oxford languages: act dishonestly, or unfairly in orden to gain an advantage.
Smurfing is an illegal activity that can have serious consequences. Current bank regulations require banks or other financial institutions to report cash transactions exceeding $10,000—or any others they deem suspicious—on a suspicious activity report (SAR).
Is Smurfing a bannable offence in gaming? Rules range from game to game. Some games, like Fortnite and Rocket League have taken a serious stance against it and it is against the rules. Meanwhile, other games allow it, relying on their matchmaking systems to take care of it.
If you take part in behavior that's disruptive, abusive, or discriminatory, you can be banned from communicating in-game or even be temporarily or permanently banned from the game itself. Here are some examples to avoid: Insulting, threatening, harassing, or offensive language.
Introduction: My name is Mr. See Jast, I am a open, jolly, gorgeous, courageous, inexpensive, friendly, homely person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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