In their move to further take strict action against people smurfing, players saw a new bane wave from developers of Dota 2, Valve. Many notable Dota 2 players were affected by the recent ban, along with many other smurf accounts.
Among these was Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi, who managed to remain undetected from the initial ban. However, Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk ratted him out, saying his account was still not banned. Following this revelation, Miracle- also saw his Smurf accounts banned.
Here are some of the affected players –
Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk
Dzmitry “Fishman” Palishchuk
Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko
Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi
Xu “fy” Linsen
Artem “Yuragi” Golubiev
Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin
Steven “StingeR” Vargas from the esports team Mad Kings was also banned in the same wave during the South American closed qualifiers for the Dreamleague Season 22 match against Thunder Awaken.
Initially, everyone thought StingeR was account boosting as one of his teammates David “Parker” Nicho Flores played on his account. However, he later clarified the ban was for a different reason.
No mercy on anyone
Valve has announced smurfing as a punishable offence. Be it a professional or regular player, everyone will be punished with a permanent ban. Since its inception, Valve has banned over 90,000 Smurf accounts, which included multiple pros.
New esports organization, 9Pandas also recently posted an image making fun of the situation on X. Looking at the record of the last few months, more bans are inevitable as part of Valve’s anti-smurfing campaign.
The company have even implemented creative ways of handling bans. Last year, Valve started handing out gifts to Dota 2 accounts. Opening these gifts revealed a “Highly toxic lump of coal” for people smurfing. With this, their account was also VAC banned.
