Smurfing is Not Welcome in Dota

https://lemmy.world/post/4311571

Smurfing is Not Welcome in Dota - Lemmy.world

From the Dota 2 website: >Today, we permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts that have been active over the last few months. Smurf accounts are alternate accounts used by players to avoid playing at the correct MMR, to abandon games, to cheat, to grief, or to otherwise be toxic without consequence. >Additionally, we have traced every single one of these smurf accounts back to its main account. Going forward, a main account found associated with a smurf account could result in a wide range of punishments, from temporary adjustments to behavior scores to permanent account bans.

How exactly does smurfing work? I don’t play Dota and the description on the page doesn’t really help me understand
You’re an experienced player but create a new account to get matched against noobs. Since the game is free, there’s no cost to doing so.
You still need a valid phone number to play ranked games, so there is some limitation.
Well yeah, but you can get a verification number for less than half a dollar usually if you know where to look.