Cover-Credits:
Valve and Gorgc
Valve's massive ban wave against players using smurf accounts continues to impact the pro player scene. This move, starting on 16th January, has seen a list of professional players being banned, with more being added every day. Notably, two of Dota’s prominent figures, Quinn "Quinn" Callahan and Janne "Gorgc" Stefanovski, have publicly expressed their satisfaction with these actions, particularly looking forward to the ban of Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko and Danil "gpk" Skutin’s smurf accounts.
Quinn and Gorgc look Forward to Nightfall and gpk’s Smurf Account Ban
“The smurf ban wave is so based (courageous and unique, not bothered about what others think), it's been a while since I've wholeheartedly agreed with a decision so much. Cya later 87 nightfall accounts,” wrote Quinn on X (Twitter) expressing his excitement over the recent smurf ban wave that has affected many professional players, but Nightfall has seemingly eluded the ban wave as he was still seen playing on his smurf account at the time of writing.
While Gorgc, on a recent Twitch stream discussed how gpk has seemingly evaded the smurf ban wave and hoped that Valve would act on it soon and ban the smurf account. On 18th January, Valve finally banned gpk’s smurf account, adding him to the list of the Dota 2 professionals caught in the ban wave.
“He (gpk) escaped it. F I thought for sure I was going to check and he was going to be banned. How is he not banned maybe his private profile doesn't show if it's banned or not ah let's just hope it's banned.” Gorgc said.
Notably, in an earlier incident Gorgc and gpk had an altercation during a public game over Gorgc’s itemization on Hoodwink. gpk started flaming Gorgc for not building Force staff and Glimmper cape and then said “Can’t be a player so be a streamer.” to which Gorgc replied, “Small pen*s is why you smurf?”
Valve continues its battle against smurfs and has so far banned close to twenty professional player’s smurf accounts. Gorgc’s earlier statement on Valve not banning professional players and only issuing warnings to them has been proven otherwise by the publisher’s recent actions. As of now, Nightfall’s smurf account is still active but it can be expected to be banned in the coming days as Valve seems to be taking full measures to ensure a smurf-free Dota 2 experience.
