Cover-Credits:
Russian Twitch streamer Rostislav “Rostik999” Protasenya, a 10K MMR player, was reportedly recently banned. He was seen playing on his Divine 1 smurf account which received a VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) ban but it did not stop him from smurfing as he was seen logging into another 2K MMR account shortly and continued his stream. It should be noted that Valve’s crackdown on smurfing has been rampant in recent months. Recently, popular Dota 2 streamer and content creator Janne "Gorgc" Stefanovski put forward his take regarding smurfing and called Valve’s punishment system bad.
Rostislav_999’s Rampant Smurfing Continues Despite Ban?
A Reddit post titled “All this coal getting malarkey, was it a one-time event?” talked about multiple streamers smurfing actively. It listed Rostislav_999 along with Vlad "GGwpLanaya" Malikov, aquazore, awedota, miragedotess, and Lens as active smurfs. The original poster [OP] linked various videos as proof of their rampant cheating. The post also put forth serious concerns and noted how these smurfs were not getting banned despite them being active.
Following this, on 3rd January, Russian Twitch streamer Rostislav “Rostik999” Protasenya was banned. He was smurfing in the Divine bracket being a 10K MMR player. This, however, did not stop the streamer from smurfing as he allegedly logged into an Archon account and continued his stream. He was also seen smurfing on his Herald 1 account despite the ban on his original Divine 1 smurf account.
The Reddit OP explained, "10k smurf from yesterday (Rostislav_999) was VAC banned. The caption at the tops says: "Your account got banned by VAC anticheat or by the developer". Valve is listening after all."
Rostislav_999 even took to Telegram to post [translated into English], “There are very angry people in the [Reddit] comments, put them in their place guys."
Gorgc Criticizes Valve's Punishment System For Smurfs
After seeing the list of streamers who are actively smurfing, Gorgc said, “If you're a streamer they wouldn't mind getting banned, they don't care so. Why would they care about getting banned? You know what I mean? it's just beneficial. You just get to smurf legally and why not have fun smurfing until you get banned? You know what I mean? So who the fu*k cares?”
Criticizing Valve’s punishment system, Gorgc said, “Valve needs todo their job better and enforce their bans if they're going to be serious about it. Otherwise, people are going to taunt them in their face like they are doing here.
Valve has been actively banning smurf accounts since September 2023. It has been working towards creating a smurf-free Dota 2 community but certain streamers are not afraid of getting banned and thus they continue to smurf on stream.
