Suggestion: a proposal to fight smurfing or embrace smurfing

[danielesegato]

Description

I posted this on reddit here https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/y3w5kz/what_i_would_propose_to_fight_embrace_smurfing_if/

I've been told to post it here as well as a suggestion. If this wasn't the place I apologize in advance.

I hope to spawn an healthy discussion from this that would benefit everyone.

The proposal have different parts and it is complex:

• introduce Dota profiles within the same steam account
• make it really tedious to change account for smurfs
• develop some additional manual verification steps for playing ranked
• harsh penalties for 100% verified smurf, booster, account buyers (ban on all account, even if you are a pro player)

Multi-Profile

I believe there are some valid reasons for which people smurf and this part of the proposal try to address them.

• get rid of private profile, profile is public for everyone
• ban dota overwolf as a cheat and forbid it (this is to mitigate problem of having a public profile for spammers)
• allow people to create up to 3 different dota MMR account for the same account (Main, Alternate, Party)
• Main: the higher MMR profile
• Alternate: this account can be used to practice other roles or just play more chill (no tryhard)
• Party: this account will only be allowed to play ranked party without rank limitations (an immortal can play in party with an herald), and only against other party with at least 1 person play from party account - party profile will be automatically used for everyone in the party
• Main and Alternate will automatically swap, main will always be the highest Mmr account
• Each profile will be connected and anyone will be able to see your other accounts MMR, Medal and games
• If the Alternate / Main account MMR grow too much apart (how much TBD) a forced recalibration will be activated on both account
• If a profile is not used for too long (how much TBD) a forced recalibration will be activated.
• Simultaneous game activity on 2 different profile is punished with a lifetime ban offence
• Letting someone else play on your profile will be a lifetime ban for both accounts

Players will be allowed a grace period of 1 month where they will be able to admit to smurfing and pick one steam account as main one and import up to 3 gamer profiles into that account without suffering any consequences.

Account that are never logged in during that month will be asked to declare if it's their only main account or still given the option to import only at the first login and won't be able to play ranked until they pick a choice.

Account swapping / changing Tediousness

This part of the proposal is aimed at making account swapping a tedious process.

• after a re-login on a new account ranked will not be available for 48h (2 weeks if happens again within 1 week) and a minimum of 4 hours of gaming
• same process if the login happen for a new PC
• player will be clearly marked as playing on a new PC in-game and additional scrutiny will apply on account re-login more then once per month

see below for Internet Cafè

Peer reporting

This part of the proposal is aimed at relying on the community to more accurately link accounts together.

Let user report smurf accounts in their friend list / previous party teammates. The report will allow to selecting multiple account that belong to the same player chosing from the friend list and / or from an history of all the players that joined their party recently.

They will be given the option to say if they

• suspect to be the same person
• be sure: was in same an audio call while they swapped account or they said it via some text message

Same for reporting boosters / boosted accounts in own party / friend list.

Identity verification

This part of the proposal is aimed at fighting Smurfing by using a stronger method than phone verification. And I'm sure lot of people will not like this because of "privacy". But I don't really think it is worst than posting your picture in social.

• to Play ranked players need to accept privacy policy allowing the following
• upload a picture of your face while holding a text note with a generated code written on it
• the picture has to be uploaded by all the active logins of your account (if more than one) or you have to force logout on other accounts (they'll have to re-verify next time they enter them)

In the meanwhile some automatic algorithm will be used on valve servers to:

• Detect the same person on multiple different accounts and flag the account for verification (face recognition), for example they could check same IP / PC login etc.. --> forced to pick 1 account, the other gets a lifetime ban, the one picked get 1 month ban
• Detect different person on the same account and flag those account for verification (face recognition) --> lifetime ban both account
• Detect manufactured pictures (Photoshop or the likes, ex. same picture with just different text on the note) --> timed ban on the account, lifetime if repeated

In case of appeal (ex. claim they are twins or same-looking person) a stronger verification will be required to lift the ban (ex. actual ID verification of all the accounts involved).

Exceptions and corner cases (Internet Cafè)

There are things I see suggested in lot of place that would not work or would cause different kind of issues, like IP banning / detection or hardware banning / detection. These are not viable routes to detect smurfing for various technical reasons. But they could be good ways to flat accounts for in-depth verification. Having an history of IP address and hardware IDs attached to the accounts can surely help with the heuristic of detecting fishy play but there are legit reasons for both (dynamic IP, shared PC etc...).

Now, for Internet Cafè...

• provide a way for business to register their PCs hardware IDs to Valve along with their IP address
• Internet Cafè will ID the person in exchange of this they will be given an an unlock code by Valve that they can provide to the User
• The player will be able to use the code to unlock ranked in the PC they just login into

this will ensure Valve will be able to verify steam registration data against the ID when they use the unlock code.

A business opportunity?

What I described here could be implemented by Valve as a generic mechanism to guard against smurfing and adopted by multiple games, it doesn't have to be Dota2 specific.

Conclusion

I believe there is much that can still be done to get rid of smurfing and make the game better for everyone. But I'm sure the community can come up with other ideas or improve my proposal.

Example Match ID (and possibly Timestamp)

No response

Screenshots

No response

[Aphotic]

great post!
smurfing/boosting has became a real plague to our game!
it needs more eyes on the subject!
upvoted!

[commentator24]

those are all bad ideas, though presentation looks nice.

what dota needs is incentive not to smurf / create new accounts just to try new hero and rank at the same time / shorter queue for high ranks / party rank with friends etc.

-why do you need to make all profiles public? this gives more advantage to overwolf users / smurfs. -developing anti-cheat for overwolf is costly. what if there are hundreds of cheats / third party apps out there? better to make better post game reports to avoid false positives / negatives reports. -ID checks at personal / business level are just silly. what if one of the servers got hacked and ID got stolen? sue valve? lol -why multiple dota profiles / accounts then forced recalibration? no time for that. just silly might as well create 5 MMR for each roles pos 1 2 3 4 5, separate MMR for each hero, reset MMR every season, or even more MMR with win / lose streaks e.g. 3 win streak +30 (60 mmr), 6 winstreak +60 (90 mmr per game) so smurfs get to their proper MMR faster. I also think it's better if normal games have MMR so players can party rank without getting MMR too far apart message. this mode should allow you to vs any skill brackets e.g. immortal party with herald, archon vs divines for a chill game, while ranked MMR match you with similar medals, so MMR too far apart message can stay. players should be able to tick box if they want their MMR to change through normal games or not e.g. (might be +5 or -45 if difference too great like before). -party MMR was removed, it's silly to bring it back. Team / Guild MMR / wager guild points might be fun though. -it's already tedious enough to play 100 hours to rank. ppl create new accounts to make their stats look better / don't want to lose current MMR / play with friends / try new heroes. PC also does not last forever, ppl buy new PC / play at internet cafe and its tedious for identification check for something simple as gaming. why do you need to punish players who play good outside their bracket and not punish bad players who play bad / repeat the same mistakes in their own bracket? dota just need better auto feedback feature e.g. perhaps supports / cores could've harass more in lane, stack and pull, feed less kills, etc or gain more MMR from their performance. some players play good but don't have the time to climb back MMR and get reported as smurfs. some returning players haven't play for a long time and get reported as account buyers.

and how about better MVP feature to detect smurfs? e.g. 20 recent match with at least 3+ MVP has different profile features just like when players won battlecup. Highlighted MVP shows 3 of the MVP used heroes, so players can plan ahead how to counter the smurf / good player. dota should be more fun and competitive not punishing.

[Kobooo]

Great work.

1. Idea about blocking ranked after account switching - very good
2. ID photo identyfication - too complicated

I am java developer. I will present How I would implement it.

1. Algorythm for idea number 1:

Steam knows our PC parts, even their serial number. Steam should threat bunch of parts as individual PC. Create a hash from it. For ex. hash from S/N of mac adres, hard drive, mainboard Only one account should be able to play ranked from 1 PC.

Changing PC should trigger small recalibration. -> that prevents account buyers , after buying account , client use it 1st time on own PC, than recalibration starts, he loses all ranks just in 10 games.

If changes 2 times per year or more. Blocks ranked for month. Call total mmr recalibration. Such account is propably boosted , manipulated. -> that prevents borrowing accounts for boosting.

2. Here I will show simpler solution to ID selfie:

To check who is using PC Whatsup shows on screen QR code. U have to scan it with your phone camera. Now company know that PC is used by owner of registred telephone number. Each MMR account is already connected to individual phone number so it would be easy to implement.

This is really not much work for devs. If you don't have time for it than hire me. I will implement it fast ;)