Valorant plans to eliminate smurfing by adding controversial feature

by

Even though it’s not currently available in Valorant, Riot Games has announced their intention to require players to verify their identities before they can join ranked matches. This measure aims to minimize the occurrence of smurfing.

In competitive gaming, particularly within free-to-play environments, Smurfing poses a significant problem. This practice involves players creating additional accounts to gain an unfair advantage over others, often in games where such behavior is reportable. Even when these players are banned from their current account, they can simply create a new one and continue the cycle.

To address the issue of individuals creating numerous accounts to manipulate the ranked leaderboard by targeting their preferred or disliked streamers is quite challenging. However, Valorant is making efforts to devise a suitable resolution.

To join the ranked queue, you’ll need to verify your account using a unique authenticator to ensure that multiple accounts aren’t being created by individual players.

Valorant is about to make smurfing a lot harder

In a competitive game such as Valorant, where individual gun skills play a crucial role and performance can significantly vary due to a superior player, smurfing can pose a substantial challenge.

It often happens that when a novice player enters ranked matches, they encounter someone with multiple accounts (a “smurf”) who easily wins all the games in the group. This may lead them to temporarily switch to normal matches until they feel ready again for ranked, or even quit playing Valorant altogether.

Riot is implementing stricter rules to ensure fairness in their games. Before you can join the ranked matches, your account needs verification. The specifics haven’t been revealed by Riot yet, but they are considering either a system requiring SMS confirmation or an app with unique identification for players to play ranked.

Initially, this feature will be rolled out for gamers who exhibit unusual activity on their accounts, such as logging in from an IP address not typically associated with your gaming sessions. The purpose of this change is to discourage account sharing and ensure that each player earns their way up to the level required for ranked matches, without skipping the grind.

In some regions beyond the West, such as China and South Korea, it’s common to require personal identification information similar to a social security number to create an account. This is likely the reason why participants from bootcamps going to South Korea for League of Legends find it challenging to establish accounts.

It’s highly unlikely that Riot will demand something as extensive as a personal ID for playing ranked games, but such a measure could be seen as a potential strategy to combat the widespread issue of smurfing.

Additionally, given the substantial player base of Valorant and the potential many players who might need to undergo an additional verification process to maintain their ranked gameplay, there’s likely to be resistance within the community. However, this step could bring about significant long-term advantages.

To mark its fifth anniversary, Valorant is introducing several enhancements aimed at improving the user experience. These improvements range from stricter and more distinct penalties for inappropriate conduct to an upgrade to the Unreal Engine 5.

Read More

2025-05-30 20:49