The League of Legends community is calling on Riot Games to needle in on players creating alt-accounts to ‘smurf’ in lower-ranked queues and Normal lobbies following the developers unveiling plans for a new crackdown on toxicity.
Smurfing has always been an issue in League, and it has been creating a horrible experience for players who want to enjoy and learn more about the game and level up.
In a League developer update on May 24, the Riot team confirmed they will be implementing more intense behavioral systems to help reduce toxicity. The key takeaway is they will restrict ranked games for those punished by their systems.
This means it will restrict ranked for those who’ve gone AFK, intentionally fed, were abusive in chat, and more. The devs will also be looking at disruptive behavior too.
For the most part, the idea behind these changes has been accepted by the League community, and many are interested to see how they will play out. However, there is a general concern that this update isn’t doing enough about smurfing. Some players have multiple accounts and don’t care about having one restricted or banned because they can create a new one and continue their toxic behavior on fresh profiles.
This must get top billing in any crackdown, League players are demanding.
On top of this, League enthusiasts suggested disruptive players get their own queue which would exile them for some time to hopefully rethink their behavior.
Unfortunately, all the changes in Riot’s toxicity crackdown won’t be implemented for a few months, so we won’t know how effective they’ll be or if they will actually make any real changes to the ongoing issues in ranked games.
And, for the time being, Riot has not responded to any of the calls regarding smurfs, so that may well continue despite the League fan outcry that has boiled up this week.
