Should Valorant have a “prime account” system like CS: GO to deal with smurfing?

Valorant doesn’t have an air-tight way of dealing with its long-standing smurfing issue plaguing the game since its competitive mode.

Factors like the present LP loss/gain system and the incredibly long queue times in the Immortal rank and above have often forced high elo players into creating smurf accounts. This ruins the game for those still stuck in Iron and Bronze.

Putting an effectual stop to the smurfing pandemic in Valorant, or in any game for that matter, is not the easiest thing to pull off. Even if the entirety of the enemy team reports said players, they are hardly penalized for their actions.

Players using smurf accounts often grief in Valorant and intentionally throw the game so that the account doesn’t accidentally rank up.

Hence, they ruin the gameplay experience for others in more ways than one. This is turning the lower-ranked tiers into elo hell for those serious about ranking up and getting better at Valorant.

In a recent Reddit post, a Valorant player, FapshotBG, proposed a “two-factor authentication with mobile number” to help curb smurfing significantly.

And with the number of positive responses and upvotes that the post has gotten, it’s safe to assume that a good part of the Valorant community feels a verification process can be a good idea for the game.

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Valorant having a prime status like CS: GO may not be such a bad idea

Image via Pinnacle.com

Much of the concern that Valorant players have in the Reddit post is that as long as the game is free, smurfing cannot be completely dealt with.

When elaborating on the two-factor authentication system, FapshotBG said:

“Riot already uses it in Clash tournaments. They know how much it reduces smurfing. In CS: GO, you need to link your mobile number to your account, so you’re able to play prime matchmaking.”

“But you can get a fake number online!!” Yeah, no one does that in League of Legends, and we’ve already seen it. So why isn’t Riot actually adding the easiest anti-smurf tool to Valorant?”

Clash tournaments in Riot Games’ other IP, League of Legends, use the mobile phone verification process to effectively deal with much of the smurfing that can occur in-game.

CS: GO’s prime status also uses a similar method, and many players in the comments thread feel that Valorant too should implement a similar system.

One Redditor suggested that a viable solution would be to use Valorant’s Battle Pass as a reward for those who purchase Valorant’s prime status. The prime account could be worth as much as the pass itself, which is $10, making it $5 cheaper than CS: GO’s.

On the downside, this can prompt any smurf with money to spare to create a secondary prime account to play in the lower ranks.

Valorantfeedback elaborated on his point by proposing three distinct conditions that a player must fulfill before being able to upgrade his/her basic Valorant account:

1. Any account created before Act 1 ended.
2. Any account that bought at least one Battle Pass.
3. Any account that’s older than a year (obviously not a thing right now, but for future reference).

“I feel like anyone who wanted to try this game already made an account back in Act 1. Completely new players will probably be new for FPS games, and I doubt they’d want to play ranked anytime soon. If they do, $10 Battle Pass is of great value.”

These steps will force the Valorant smurfs and hackers to invest a great deal of time and money to create a secondary prime account, which they will not readily opt for.

A “two-factor” authentication process, and incentivizing the more serious players into getting a prime account, can help deal with a lot of the smurfing problems that Valorant is facing at the moment.

And as Riot Games is known to take a lot of community feedback when developing its game, we might get something similar in future updates.