Is smurfing legal?

thecrimsonsatyr

Title.

Is starting a new account just so you can beat up on people with low elo while making sure you purposefully low frag in other matches something that is condoned?

To me it seems like a pretty bad thing to do. It screws up the match matching, because you aren't being placed where you are supposed to be. On the rounds you decide to pop off you are beating up on players far below your skill level, and even on rounds where you are hold back, either you are completely screwing over your team, or you are still supporting your team in ways that ensures your team wins without getting frags.

Just seems like an entirely scummy practice. Nothing against people having alternative accounts, but you shouldn't be keeping your ELO low just for the purpose of being able to smurf.

unkindsouls

i feel like alot of smurfing players will come from overwatch

Sergio

For me it shouldn't be legal. It's like to play with cheats, you have an advantaje that the enemies doesn't have, in this case, more skill.

y844kst

Honestly there isn't much riot can do to stop this behavior. Legal terms go for your life. Riot have also stated having multiple accounts isn't against their TOS

slinki

I feel like smurfing should be legal, you can't really ban people from playing on a new account since you don't know their reason. Maybe they are higher rank than their friends and want to play competative with them, maybe they're in the process of ranking that account up so they have two accounts to play on, you can't really know. You can't do or learn anything when playing against a cheater but if you're playing against a smurf you can learn alot about the game and improve if that's what you want, if you don't care about improving or winning games then losing to a better player even if it is a smurf shoulnd't be something you happen upon often or even care much about.

thecrimsonsatyr

As I said in my OP there is no issue with second accounts. The issue comes in when the person artificially tries to keep their account elo low by throwing matches or not performing for the sole purpose of continuing to play versus low elo players.

Smurfs arent just people with secondary accounts. They are people who go all out one match and then play poorly in the next couple matches. This allows them to feel like they are good players, when the reality is they are just gaming the match maker so they can just beat up on players far below their skill level.

Its the gaming the match maker I don't think that should be legal.

For reference. I was in a match for a few rounds with an admitted smurf. One of the games I was on his team, he ran around with nothing but the classic head shotting people. He went 18/15. Respectable, sure, but then the next round, I guess he was salty I called him a scum bag smurfer, so decided to go all out. He ended the match 28/5. This is where the issue comes.

If he played at his full skill consistently the match maker hopefully would place him with players closer to his skill level.