Today, we permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months. Smurf accounts are alternate accounts used by players to avoid playing at the correct MMR, to abandon games, to cheat, to grief, or to otherwise be toxic without consequence.

Additionally, we have traced every single one of these smurf accounts back to its main account. Going forward, 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.

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[–] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Smurfing is knowingly and deliberately playing at the incorrect skill-level/mmr/elo. Most times, people will create or buy a separate account that somehow has a lower mmr/elo attached to it, to do this. You can 'play bad' or 'throw the game' for 50 games in a row and your rating will tank a lot, so that's a bummer to encounter as your new teammate randomly... Then this player can win a lot of games in a row playing as 'themselves' and completely stomp games all the way back to their 'true' mmr. Does that help explain it?

[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Yep I understand now! Thanks for the explanation. I don't get how that'd be fun unless the person just enjoys being an asshole...