Cover-Credits:
Valve, Nigma Galaxy
On January 17, Valve launched another ban wave in its ongoing fight against smurfing and other prohibited activities. This action notably impacted several professional Dota 2 players. Among those affected was Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk, who expressed on Telegram that numerous smurf accounts had been banned, but Amer "Miracle-" Al-Barkawi's smurf had been spared. However, following Yatoro's post, Miracle's smurf accounts were quickly banned the next day, adding Miracle to the roster of banned professionals.
Yatoro's Call-Out Leads to Ban of Miracle's Smurf
In an aggressive stance against smurfing, Valve has been orchestrating large-scale ban waves throughout the past year to curb the prevalence of smurfs in Dota 2. The ban wave issued on January 17 impacted numerous Dota 2 professionals including Yatoro, and Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek, and Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov.
Upon receiving news of their account bans, the reactions of the affected Dota 2 players varied.
Following the ban, Yatoro took to Telegram to point out how none of Miracle’s six smurf accounts were banned, he said, “O no [my] smurfs banned. Miracle didn’t get any smurfs banned, fair enough. Not one from 6 smurfs I suggest Wonder Boy gets 4 gold per second, Valve will approve —What do you guys think about Miracle Smurfs?”
Surprisingly, just a few hours after Yatoro's statement gained significant attention on popular community forums, Miracle's Rank 13 smurf account, which boasts over 15 thousand matches, was banned.
Miracle was not the only professional player to face such action recently. Several prominent pros from various regions, including China, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and others, have also had their smurf accounts banned.
The list of players affected so far includes:
Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov
Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk
Artour "Arteezy" Babaev
Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek
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
Amer "Miracle-" Al-Barkawi
Valve’s crackdown on smurf began on 1st September 2023, in a blog post “Smurfing is Not Welcome in Dota,” Valve wrote it “permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months.”
Following this, Valve trolled smurf accounts by gifting a “Highly toxic lump of coal” in the Frostivus gift bag that would immediately issue a lifetime ban on opening, one such notable individual was Mason "mason" Venne who was one of the first victims of the troll gift.
Earlier, Janne "Gorgc" Stefanovski, seemingly fed up with Valve not taking action against professional players smurfing said that Valve would not ban a professional player and only leave them with a warning if they were found guilty of smurfing, but Valve’s recent crackdown on Dota 2 professionals smurfing proved otherwise.
