The gaming culture is no stranger to the practice of smurfing. This is defined as logging into a secret account that is separate to your main account, therefore allowing you to play a game undetected. Typically, smurfing is used by players to better themselves without having to compromise their main account’s stats, giving them free reign to try out new strategies or play without affecting their record that they have garnered so far. This is something that is quite common in Rocket League, with many players choosing to use this method on a regular basis.
From the Rocket League perspective, smurfing entails having one account that is ranked low in competitive, and having another that is ranked high. These are then partied up and put into matches, therefore tricking the game into placing them into matches that seem to be even. So hypothetically, you can get a team of diamonds playing against low platinums.
This practice is common in Rocket League, but perhaps only because it isn’t a bannable offence, according to the game’s forums. If you are caught, apparently you won’t receive any season rewards, which is punishment enough for some players. The art of smurfing is often frowned upon in many other games, a couple in particular being Blizzard franchises StarCraft and Overwatch, whilst in other cases such as CS:GO, it is considered by many to be a worse problem than hacking.
Should Psyonix punish players for smurfing in Rocket League, or is it a harmless method to use? Let us know in the comments section below.
11 comments
U should ban the smurfs
They have too ban them it’s disturbing other , and they might quit rocket league because of this
I enjoy playing people who are significantly better than I am so bring on the smurfs.
There’s a lot of YouTubers that do road to Grand Champ episodes on their smurf accounts. I don’t think they should be banned as smurfs will very quickly find their current level fairly quickly.
True they will level up quickly and then they just start another or new acct and do it again and again. They have it in the rules as cheating. If it’s cheating then they should be banning them. Surfs are actually ruining the game for legit players who refuse to cheat. Outside of my personal beliefs which also coincide with my religious beliefs therefore I will never be able to compete with these cheaters. In fact I’ll never rank high enough to get better even because I just get crushed in the first minute of play. It’s absolutely ridiculous. The ranking has become so bad I’m real close to throwing this game away. This is my favorite game of all time but the cheaters have So ruined it for me. I’m guessing that well over 50 percent of all their players are now surfing dearly and it just gets worse by the day. Rocket League your matching algorithm sucks the big you know what. I either kick so.eone so bad they quit in the first minute of play or usually it’s me getting my ads handed to me in a hand basket and I quit 40 seconds in because it’s 6 to 0. Again absolutely ridiculous. Why have a rule if you won’t enforce it. I’m not a very good programmer but from my perspective it wouldn’t be that hard to have an algorithm seek these cowards out and make the punishment severe enough that it curbs the behavior. I’m much better at business than I am at programming and I can tell you what happens when you piss off enough of your base and I would bet a years pay you’ve already been hit in the bottom line whether you know it or not. And I’m sure I’m a couple more frustrations away from joining most of .y friends in just throwing away my disc or deleting my copy and done for good. In the last year this has gone from bad to almost intolerable. I can guarantee your revenue will grow farther than it has so far of you get rid as many surfs as possible. There’s ways going to be some that get through but you won’t have it happen in just about every single match that I have in playing a fucking Smurf. I’ve even co sidered a class action law suit to force to enforce your own rules. This should be your number one priority to fix if it’s pissing off this many customers. It’s such an easy thing to fix it blows me away that this company could care less about it’s customers and not even attempt to curb the infraction.
/sign
I love your ‘proof’ link, which has nothing said by anyone official. What a fluff piece of shit article. Thanks Ham.
It’s the worst when you play 1v1 silver when the other guy slides it up the wall spins around it and kicks it into the goal without losing touch.
There are SO MANY smurfs in silver 1v1… it is atrocious. There is no way getting out of silver because there is always someone just WAY better than the other silvers.
Was trying to make myself believe that this was mostly an endseason problem. Dropped from mid C2 to low D3. New season; 42 out of my first 50 games had at least one Smurf account. Ridiculous.. I play mostly 2v2. Sadly this is where the Smurfinfection seams to be the worst.
What makes me more angry than losing my own rank is that this in turn makes me a bad guy for having to beat “real” D3 players, making the game suck for them.
Dear Psyonix, your game is broken.
Wow, lot of complaining here! I’ve been platinum 2-3 for months, and I’ve never played against a smurf in double or standard (except the occasional one in 1v1s). Besides that, I enjoy playing against better opponents, that’s by far the best way to improve! Take a good long look in the mirror if you believe you play against smurfs 50% of the matches. Maybe spend some time to improve your own mechanics?
I’ve put 1800+ hours into nearly 13,000 Rocket League matches. The game itself is fantastic, and is probably my favorite game of all time. However, I find myself wanting to play less and less due to the rampant cheating. I don’t mind losing a fair match, it’s all part of sport. However, it’s simply not fun when you are clearly outclassed, and have little hope of scoring even a single goal vs someone who is supposedly in a lower rank. Unfortunately, it seems like this comprises 50% of my matches these days. As the player base shrinks, the ratio of smurfs goes up.
I realize that a sufficiently sophisticated AI for detecting cheaters isn’t in the cards, but if something doesn’t change, I’ll just stop playing altogether. I imagine that many others feel the same way. What a sad fate for such a brilliant game.