Dota 2 developer Valve has seemingly sent out another wave of bans to players who are using smurf accounts or sharing accounts with other players, and one notable person on the receiving end was pro player Steven “StingeR” Vargas, who had his account banned mid-way through a match.
Valve is yet to confirm that another ban wave has taken place, but multiple reports from high-level players show that a large number of accounts have been banned. The targets seem to be smurf accounts and anyone who has shared their account with another person. This is believed to be the reason why StingeR was banned, as his teammate David “Parker” Nicho Flores was caught using StingeR’s account in recent weeks, something he has since defended on Twitter, despite it being against the Steam terms of service.
The ban happened mid-way through the Mad Kings vs Thunder Awaken match in the South American qualifier for Dreamleague Season 22. StingeR, who is the captain of the Mad Kings Dota 2 team, disconnected from the match, with his teammates later stating in the in-game chat that his account had been banned. The broadcast for the match was paused shortly after this, with Mad Kings then being given a default loss for the second game in the series, eliminating them from the tournament.
Had Mad Kings managed to win the qualifier, they would have secured a spot in Dreamleague Season 22, which has a prize pool of $1 million, so this could have been a very costly mistake for StingeR and his team.
While confirmation is yet to appear, it seems other pro players have had accounts banned but all of these are smurf accounts and not their main ones, unlike StingeR, whose main account now shows that it has a game ban that was given out today. Last year Valve said it had spoken to pro players and decided that they would no longer be immune to smurfing bans, and it seems that this is the result of that. Now with many of their smurf accounts banned, it is safe to assume that if they are found to be doing it again, there could be bigger consequences.
While the timing of the ban certainly raised some eyebrows, the fact that Valve is finally clamping down on smurfs after years of giving them free rein is a good thing. While high-level players may have to wait a while to find a competitive match, that seems like a small price to pay when their fans would see them smurfing and think it was ok for them to do as well.
Read the full article here
