Posing as a newbie has consequences, says Valve.
Valve’s been going pretty hard on Dota 2 this year, and the latest is targeting those who start fresh accounts in the free-to-play game so that they can play easy games and stomp rookies. Valve has also traced the accounts back to their main accounts, and says that from now on „a main account found associated with a smurf account could result in a wide range of punishments, from temporary adjustments to behavior scores to permanent account bans.“
Smurf accounts, for those of you who don’t know, are brand-new accounts used by experienced players to avoid playing at a proper matchmaking level—or to just cheat, grief, troll, and be broadly toxic without permanent consequence.
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USA — software Valve banned 90,000 smurf accounts from Dota 2—then got the main accounts...