'In all honesty, it was fun as hell smoking people who were new to the game.'
Smurfing is an MLB All-Star homering off of Little League pitchers. Or it’s a risk-free way to play ranked Rocket League matches with your lower-level dad. Wait, maybe it’s a practice used to test if you’re stuck in ELO hell thanks to shoddy teammates? In that case, you’re probably just wasting your time starting a second account—trust me, you’re never as good as you think you are.
Nearly everyone—developers and players, professional and casual—has a different definition for what it is. And smurfing affects different games differently, making it hard to nail down when it's bad and when it's not. Still, I talked to people who make and play some of today's most popular online games, including League of Legends, Overwatch and Rainbow Six Siege, to give it a try.
Some people reached out to me and felt like smurfs were a waste of time. Why pay extra money just to preserve your ranking? But for a lot of players, those numbers matter. And having an extra account, whether it’s to use to play with friends who aren't as good as you or just to play without extra pressure, can make a game feel less serious. And then it’s less stressful.
Anonymity also is an outlet for pro players to try out new heroes or strategies secretly. Pengu said that it was once common in games like League of Legends for pros to smurf to try out champions without airing their test runs to the world. Likewise, pros often use smurf accounts to try out the meta a few ranks down from the top—an interesting way to develop and learn from off-meta trends in other ranks.
Game director Jeff Kaplan wrote in 2017 that there’s a bad perception of smurfing, but in reality, it wasn't really an issue in Overwatch. Kaplan defined smurfing as"an experienced player buying a second account to reset their account progress and internal matchmaking rating."
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