Valorant matches in Iron and Bronze are the most affected by smurfs

Smurfing has been an issue in Valorant ever since it was officially launched earlier in June.

The lower-ranked tiers have seen more and more high elo players styling on them in both normal and competitive matchmaking in Valorant, and it doesn’t seem like this problem will be going away anytime soon.

Even Valorant pro Hiko had taken to one of his streams to talk about this smurf pandemic in Valorant, commenting that:

“Smurfing ruins two separate things, right? Smurfing ruins the game you’re in, so not only the person you’re playing with, you’re ruining that guy/girl’s account by boosting the rank and by giving them wins that they shouldn’t get. They’re not getting the wins on their own, and they’re not getting better. Moreover, you’re also boosting all the people in our team; you’re giving them a free win if you’re doing like 50 kills.”

“But also, you’re ruining the game for the person you’re smurfing with, the person you’re boosting. That person will be ruining the game for everyone on the team in the future when they end up solo queuing, and they are Immortal 1 when they should be Silver. So smurfing only literally hurts in the immediate future and the long term future.”

In Valorant, smurfing has grown to be one of the biggest detriments to its competitive integrity. And this issue seems to be getting worse the more popular that this game becomes each day.

In a recent Reddit post, a Valorant player who goes by the handle of slayyingmachine talks about an experiment in which he smurfed in the lower elos on an alternate account and found that “at least three out of four games In Iron/Bronze tiers have people smurfing.”

Smurfing in Valorant is getting worse

Image via Riot Games

Slayyingmachine started the Reddit post by saying:

“I see a lot of posts every day saying that low elo is very bad and there are a lot of smurfs in low ranks. So I created a new account and placed it in Iron 3 to see how many smurfs I get each game. The results were actually mind-blowing.”

Being a Diamond 3 player in Valoreant himself, he could spot smurfs in the server quite effectively, and in the four games he played, he gave quite a detailed analysis.

Game 1:

“Caught two smurfs on the enemy team with around 30+ kills. These guys were owning my team, one tapping heads. My team also had a smurf with 30 kills. A/c to my analysis, these smurfs belong to Gold/Plat. Their rank in-game was Bronze 1”

Game 2:

“Enemy team had two smurfs, with one of them having 37 kills. The other one went AFK after the 1st half. They even admitted that they were smurfs and belong to Gold 3. My team had one smurf. According to my analysis, he is Gold, too, and had 32 frags.”

Game 3:

“Surprisingly, there were no smurfs on the enemy team. Their kills were below 10, and they surrendered. My team had two smurfs. After analyzing their gameplay, I concluded that they belong to Diamond-Plat. They were also talking about how they deranked on their main from Diamond.”

Game 4:

“No smurfs on the enemy team. They had below 20 kills. No one was smurfing on my team.”

Slayyingmachine’s smurfing experiment shows just how widespread and problematic this issue has become in Valorant. And the elos of Iron and Bronze are turning into an “Elo Hell” because of this. There also doesn’t seem to be a proper escape for newer players still learning to play Valorant.

The Redditor concluded by saying:

“At least 3 out of 4 games In iron/Bronze have people surfing, mostly who belong to Gold. The data I collected may not be fully accurate. But I have to admit that there are a lot of smurfs in low elo, like a way lot of smurfs than I expected.”