Valorant developers to bring in more anti-smurf changes in 2023

Smurfing has always been an issue in Valorant. Not only that, almost every popular shooter in the market today has had its fair share of issues with smurf accounts.

For the uninitiated, smurfing refers to the act of using low-ranked accounts by highly skilled players in order to get into easier lobbies. As a result, these players are often found dominating these lobbies, thereby ruining the experience of the other players in the match.

To combat this issue, Riot Games has made a lot of changes with respect to how their systems detect and handle these smurf accounts. In a recent blog post, the developers spoke about their take on the issue and what they are doing to combat it as a whole.

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Valorant developers talk about upcoming smurfing updates

Earlier this year, Riot Games issued an update with an automatic smurf detection mechanism. Thanks to this, smurf accounts had their MMRs adjusted according to their skill level, thereby reducing the number of matches that had stomps whenever a smurf account was involved.

Furthermore, the developers have also made some changes to the full-stack system in Valorant. Not only did this reduce the overall smurf activity during full-stack matches, but it also increased fairness as well.

Based on the data provided in the aforementioned blog post by Riot Games, the overall smurf activity has seen a 17% decline. New accounts that are created for such activity are getting their MMRs corrected two to three times faster than before.

As per the data revealed by Riot Games, a major reason for players to create smurf accounts was to be able to play competitive matches with friends. Ever since the changes to a full-stack queue have been implemented, the number of these smurf accounts has diminished considerably.

As detailed in the blog, the developers are continuously working on incorporating more updates in the upcoming days with respect to smurf account detection and similar issues. They further mentioned that they'll be banning accounts that have been created with malicious intentions.

Furthermore, the developers will be fine-tuning the smurf-detection mechanic. They haven't detailed how the process occurs since any small hint about the same and the Valorant community will start figuring out ways to bypass it.

Riot Games will also be looking into ways through which they can detect account boosting and account purchases in an even better manner. The former is against the very terms of service of the game itself, so it's only natural that the developers would be looking to impose a ban on such activities as well.

Finally, in tandem with the primary reason why players create smurf accounts, the developers will be exploring additional ways by which fans can play competitive matches together despite having different skill levels.

In October, the developers announced the Alpha testing stage for Premier, a game mode that would allow players of different skill levels to participate in a set of pre-scheduled matches.

Based upon their recent announcement, this is one of the many methods that the developers are exploring to allow the community to play competitively together, even with different skill levels.