Dota 2 News: Valve makes smurf detection system more responsive

Valve rolled out a small update which states that the developers of Dota 2 have made the smurf detection system more sensitive. They released the update on 11th February 2020 and it went somewhat unnoticed by the community.

The update itself does not describe the process of smurf detection but some previous updates on smurf detection have explained the procedure in brief. The detection system looks for players who are performing incredibly well in their bracket. The exact way of finding out the performance is unclear. It could be unnaturally high Gold Per Minute (GPM) or Experience Per Minute (XPM). Other factors involve the maintenance of constantly high win rates.

The update also says that smurfs will get significant MMR boosts to bring them at par with a level where they are no longer over-performing. The post also says that with the smurf detector being more sensitive, it may cause some normal players to gain extra MMR on some rare occasions.

Valve has previously addressed smurfing in their past updates. They have tried improving matchmaking in various ways. Smurfing is a universal problem for all online competitive games and other game developers also try to combat it. Higher skilled players playing against an easier opponent makes the game unfair and deteriorates the game experience for lower-skilled players.