Dota 2 Pros React to Valve's Crackdown on Smurf Accounts

On 17th January, Valve hit smurf accounts with another wave of bans. Many professional players including Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov, Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk, Artour "Arteezy" Babaev, Artem "Yuragi" Golubiev, and Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko were among those whose accounts were banned. 

Interestingly, one of these bans was dished out live during the DreamLeague Season 22 South American closed qualifier series between Mad Kings and Thunder Awaken. Mad Kings’ captain and support Steven "StingeR" Vargas okzwas banned for sharing his account with David "Parker" Nicho Flores. 

Following this, several affected Dota 2 pros and personalities took to their social media platforms to share their reactions. 

Valve's Recent Ban Wave on Smurfs

Over the last year, Valve has been actively banning smurf accounts and punishing players for indulging in prohibited activities such as account sharing, boosting, and others. Notably, in December 2023, several players received bans in the form of a “Toxic lump of coal” found in the Frostivus gift bag. After a gap of a few weeks, Valve struck again and this time, it banned many known professionals in the Dota 2 scene. Some of the affected players took to Telegram to share their reaction to their smurf accounts getting banned.

Rank 1 player and Entity’s carry, watson bid goodbye to his 12.5K MMR smurf. “Goodbye my 12,500 smurf,” he wrote. Meanwhile, Entity’s support Fishman also wrote, “Hahaha, everyone’s smurfs banned. Goodbye, professional griefer :(.”

While TORONTOTOKYO shared a light-hearted message. He joked, “I knew if I started playing to win, I’d be banned immediately.” However, Danial "Danial" Alibaev, who last played for Natus Vincere, found solace in knowing that he wasn’t the only player to be banned by Valve. He said, “Well at least I'm not alone, I figured everyone got smurfed.”

Russian Esports organization Virtus.pro took to X (Twitter) to share a photo captioned “Press F.” The photo depicted the animated “smurf” character getting into a coffin, and had a photo caption, “Valve Against Smurfs.”

Valve seems to have waged war against smurfing and is now actively banning smurf accounts of professional players too. The list of the banned players so far includes:

• Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov

• Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk

• Artour "Arteezy" Babaev

• Artem "Yuragi" Golubiev

• Dzmitry "Fishman" Palishchuk

• Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko 

• Steven "StingeR" Vargas

• Danial "Danial" Alibaev

• Dmitry "DM" Dorokhin

• Xu "fy" Linsen

• Kharis "SkyLark" Zafeiriou

• Athanasios "dEsire" Kartsabas

Valve is known for working in secret and it could ban more undetected smurf accounts in the coming days.