League players demand Riot take “zero-tolerance stance” on smurf accounts

League of Legends players have called on Riot Games to take a more active approach in taking down smurf accounts, due to their impact on the ranked experience.

Smurfing has always been a controversial feature in any multiplayer game, especially competitive ones. The idea of using a secondary account without affecting your first one has always been around, but its impact on games like League ruffles quite a few feathers. It doesn’t help that content creators makes frequent use of them, too.

Now, players are calling on Riot to take more steps to counter smurfing, with some players claiming that it creates a bad experience in ranked.

League of Legends players call on Riot to bring an end to surfing

One player voiced their frustrations with the ranked system on Reddit, saying: “The profound amount of smurfing is creating an experience similar to that of engagement-based matchmaking and this may be why so many people believe “losers queue” exists.

“Say you go on a winning streak, and you manage to climb a couple of divisions, this will cause your MMR to grow rapidly as it tries to predict your actual skill level and that’s fine, that’s what’s supposed to happen, but the next day you get on and you match into a smurf who has also likely been win streaking because they’re playing against players well below the smurfs skill level.”

Smurfs are ruining ranked
byu/Just_Addition_5650 inleagueoflegends

“When the game then tries to create two balanced teams it will put the players with the highest MMR on opposite teams, which is most likely to be the win streakers as they have an inflated MMR, in this scenario, that would be YOU and the Smurf, and this will happen for several games until your MMR is back to or below your shown rank thus creating the win/lose streaking experience we all know and hate.

Several other players agreed, with one highlighting how Riot’s disincentives don’t apply to smurfs: “None of the usual deterrents work on them because the account itself has no meaning to them, it’s all about seeing KDA and LP go up and up.”