Valorant continues smurf crackdown with Ranked change coming patch 1.13

Riot Games has announced yet another step to reduce the number of smurf accounts in Valorant’s ranked experience, with the next change coming in patch 1.13.

Smurfing is always going to be an issue in highly competitive titles. Especially games that are free to play with no added costs for making multiple accounts. Players that want to grind at different ranks, or have multiple Radiant accounts, have been able to do so without much difficulty thus far.

Up until now, so long as you register a separate email address, playing on a fresh account couldn’t be easier. 10 Unrated games and you’re off to the races, tearing it up in the competitive playlist.

However, Riot has just announced the next step in its plan to combat the issue. While it may seem like a simple change, patch 1.13 should help cut back on the ever-growing number of smurf accounts in the FPS.

Riot Games

Creating a new account in Valorant is as simple as signing up with a new email address.

As soon as the next major update arrives, things will be a little different for fresh accounts. Whether you’re swapping over to a new smurf, or booting up the game for the first time, all Valorant accounts will need to meet one criteria; rather than playing 10 Unrated games, every account will now have to win 10 Unrated games.

This may come across as a minor tweak at first, though it should lead to a bigger impact than first meets the eye. When creating a smurf, grinding out those 10 games can be done fairly quickly. There’s no need to play well and no need to strive for a victory. You could theoretically hold your ‘W’ key down each round and be done in a few hours.

That won’t be the case once patch 1.13 is deployed. Smurfs will need to actively pursue wins no different to everyone else in the lobby. There won’t be anymore handouts on the grind to unlocking the competitive mode.

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As the community suggested such a change, Riot’s very own Game Producer ‘npcSara’ confirmed that “[they’ll] be doing this in the next patch.” There’s no date set in stone just yet, but we’re now three weeks removed from the latest Valorant update. So expect to see 1.13 relatively soon.

If you’re wanting to create a secondary account in future, this change should give you pause. It’s a much bigger time commitment to win 10 games than it is to simply play 10 games. So the increase of smurfs should be noticeably smaller moving forward.

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Keep your eyes peeled for any additional tidbits over the coming days as we approach the next update. Valorant’s 1.13 patch could be the last before Episode 2 kicks off in mid-January 2021.