Riot Games has announced extensive new actions the developer and publisher of League of Legends is set to take in order to better combat smurfing in its premier game.
Smurfing is a significant issue across many games that feature competitive and ranked modes of play. Riot’s games, which chiefly include multiplayer titles Valorant and League of Legends, are among the games that most suffer from this issue. Smurfing makes the playing experience worse for many players by enabling high-skilled players to compete against overmatched opponents at lower ranks, and the prevalence of smurfs is routinely among the biggest complaints lodged by LoL players about the game.
Fans have seen Riot take various actions against smurfing and the unfairness it represents, but players have continued to complain about the issue and ask for harsher punishments against perpetrators. Riot has now revealed the new and revised actions it plans to take against smurfs in League in an effort to better curb the problem than ever before.
Riot Games has announced that smurf accounts will face significant restrictions with the help of Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheat, including suspensions and even account bans, in an effort to stop smurfs from getting an unfair advantage in League of Legends and ruining games for other players. Riot will take new action against those who engage in boosting and hitchhiking, as well as any account purchased after it’s leveled up by a different player.
According to Riot, the company’s proprietary Vanguard anti-cheat detection system has been continuously improving in its ability to detect smurf accounts. The tool’s rank manipulation report category, which was introduced in patch 25.13 and enabled players to flag those in their games they believed to be smurfs, had been “instrumental in gathering data to improve detection” of smurf accounts and players. The developer will use that data to roll out an updated model in patch 25.18, one that’s intended to better detect and punish smurfs at scale.
Riot specified that players who create a secondary account for their own personal use won’t be affected by the crackdown, as the developer specifically wants to take action against those who are using unfair means to manipulate the ranked player pool and their place in it. This includes individuals who purchase accounts ranked up by another player or use bot accounts, those transfer their accounts to more skilled players for the purpose of smurfing, and those who queue with higher-ranked players specifically to artificially inflate their ranks in an act known as hitchhiking.
Image credit: Riot Games
Regardless of what type of smurfing an account-holder engages in, it makes the game unfair for other players and generally ruins the fun of fair competition. That’s bad for Riot’s efforts to retain LoL players, so it’s no surprise that the developer would be taking stronger action to root out the issue at its core.
Riot admits that it’s a tall task to take action against every single cheater and ranked play abuser, but the developer can still try to create a more fair and less frustrating environment for its players.
Towards that end, Riot began issuing LP refunds in patch 25.6 in instances in which players had a cheater in their games, and next stepped up the detection and punishment of griefers, resulting in a significant increase in offending players being banned. The hope is that this next effort will result in a similar uptick in bans and other punishments being leveled against those who engage in smurfing in League of Legends.
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