Smurfs are plaguing this game

[Mac Tonight]

I went on a loss streak from Diamond to Plat and ever since I entered Plat, I noticed a ridiculous amount of smurf accounts plaguing Platinum. Why won't the developers do what Valve does and trace accounts via IP to the main account and perma ban it all?

[KitKat]

Short answer?
All of this brings in money to the devs.

Slightly longer answer?
A lot of those smurfs are "content creators" - youtubers, twitch streamers, tiktokers, pro-gamers who also do yt/twtich/tiktok stuff. They create alt accs to "speedrun to GM as a one-trick Spiderman" or something and often purchase skins on those alts too - part of the whole flexing their wealth and such. The audience of those folks? They see it. And they also start doing it too - both the smurfing AND buying skins. "Just like their favorite content creator".

ON TOP of that... Every new created smurf account is a +1 to the overall "created accounts" statistic in their monthly/yearly reports to the dev investors. They show that "this month we get a gazilion new smurf accounts users, so this game is popping - thus you should keep investing in us, keep giving us money so we can keep the game going and money-machine printing back on your investments".

Both of these answers are overly-simplified, as we won't ever know THE WHOLE TRUTH behind it all or what's really going on behind the scenes, but... You get the gist of it: MONEY. It's always about money.

[Cheesed to meet you]

I'm confident majority of the smurfs you encounter aren't smurfs and are just the better players on the way to their true rank, unfortunately that's how the system works, everyone starts in bronze, both the absolute fps beginners and some overwatch top 500 mega gamers that decided to try out rivals

[K]

Originally posted by Mac Tonight:

I went on a loss streak from Diamond to Plat and ever since I entered Plat, I noticed a ridiculous amount of smurf accounts plaguing Platinum. Why won't the developers do what Valve does and trace accounts via IP to the main account and perma ban it all?

Well for one: IP address can be shared. Many providers still use NAT (1 pub IP used by many customers). some use VPN for privacy for example streamers. Smurfs are natural to any games with ranking system. many comp games have smurfs: CS, OW, Val, siege. Just accept that this is the way the cookie crumbles. It comes with game. And no similar to Valve methods won't work, as it requires some information about your valve account which 3rd party games can't obtain.

[Demonlukao]

XD

[Mitrovarr]

Originally posted by Cheesed to meet you:

I'm confident majority of the smurfs you encounter aren't smurfs and are just the better players on the way to their true rank, unfortunately that's how the system works, everyone starts in bronze, both the absolute fps beginners and some overwatch top 500 mega gamers that decided to try out rivals

You can tell by level. While these certainly exist, smurfs are pretty obvious as they're generally level 10-15 accounts.

Also, you can ask them, and they'll usually tell you.

[Luthir]

Originally posted by Cheesed to meet you:

I'm confident majority of the smurfs you encounter aren't smurfs and are just the better players on the way to their true rank, unfortunately that's how the system works, everyone starts in bronze, both the absolute fps beginners and some overwatch top 500 mega gamers that decided to try out rivals

some times sure, but most are happy to tell you about how this is their x amount account and their gm main

[Cheesed to meet you]

Originally posted by Luthir:

Originally posted by Cheesed to meet you:

I'm confident majority of the smurfs you encounter aren't smurfs and are just the better players on the way to their true rank, unfortunately that's how the system works, everyone starts in bronze, both the absolute fps beginners and some overwatch top 500 mega gamers that decided to try out rivals

some times sure, but most are happy to tell you about how this is their x amount account and their gm main

ngl I had a jeff player in a game recently accusing one of my teammates of hacking, said his main is in top 500, honestly I feel like some of these "smurfs" just bs it to feel more important or some such, cuz while he wasn't bad, that was no top 500 performance, or literally anyone can be top 500 these days

[JG2thend]

Rank resets make everyone a smurf and if there's so many they are probably on your team most of the time too no?