Riot Games Is Hoping to Fight Smurfing in LoL Later This Year

Smurfing has continued to be a major problem in League of Legends and Riot developers are working on a solution.

• Reddit is ablaze with League of Legends players demanding Riot do something about the proliferation of smurfing.
• A Riot employee going by Riot_Siraris replied to the post, ultimately agreeing it was a problem.
• Siraris noted that the company is aware of the problem and are "working on it"

League of Legends players recently came together on Reddit to demand that something be done about the amount of smurf accounts in competitive lobbies. One gamer explained that smurf accounts are “by far the most toxic players” in the entire game, leading to a lot of frustrating interactions and unsatisfying matches.

While the original poster seemed concerned about the toxicity of players using smurf accounts, many felt that the integrity of the game was the main concern. Having someone pretend to be a lower skill level to get easy wins makes the match unbalanced.

“It’s something that I wish Riot addressed,” wrote one League player. “If Riot doesn’t want a smurf queue, they need to be punishing these accounts faster.”

Riot Addresses Smurfing

To the surprise of the original poster on Reddit, a Riot employee going by Riot_Siraris became quite active on the thread, ultimately agreeing that smurfing must be addressed.

In Riot Siraris’ initial reply, the League of Legends insider explained that the team is working on addressing this issue.

They wrote: “Yea, this type of experience is horrible, and we're working really hard to mitigate this type of behavior in all areas of the competitive experience. I can't talk specifics, but there are some things coming in the near future that will start to act on these types of players who just want to ruin everyone's experience.”

Siraris added that Riot is aware of the smurfs and are currently “working on it.”

Unfortunately, no specifics have been shared just yet but it sounds like the implementation may be sooner rather than later. In a separate reply, Siraris said that players will “start to see benefits later this year.” Consistent improvements, however, will happen over the next few years.

“It feels super bad to play against people who aren’t at a similar skill level to you and we want to solve that,” they explained, “but it’s a highly complex problem and we don’t want to launch something half-baked that will introduce even more chaos into the system.”

What is Smurfing in League of Legends?

The most common use of the word “smurfing” is to describe a League of Legends player who created a new account in order to play against low-level players. This is often done so high-level players can compete alongside lower-ranked friends or to grind up the ladder again.

Is Smurfing Illegal in League of Legends?

Smurfing is technically not allowed in League of Legends — or any game. In Riot’s Support page on smurfing, the developer states that there are anti-smurf measures in place. If a smurfing player gets through this, they risk getting banned from the game and from tournaments.

The page reads: “We don’t endorse it because it can ruin the game for other players, like getting stomped by a smurfing player in Bronze. Tackling it on a massive scale is difficult due to the number of players in League and the ease of account creation — in most cases we won’t proactively remove smurfs from the game.”

The developer adds that they are “actively looking” at how to solve this issue in competitive modes. For now, direct action is taken against proven smurfing cases. This can sometimes include punishing the player’s main account.