Valve’s making a record, and checking it twice; it is gonna discover out who’s naughty and good. And when you occur to be on its Naughty List – which just about applies to anybody of the “thousands” of DOTA 2 gamers now recognized as being soiled, filthy cheaters – you possibly can count on a cheerfully gift-wrapped lump of poisonous coal and a permanent ban in your stocking as your festive treat for 2023.
DOTA 2’s annual Frostivus celebrations are actually officially underway, which means everybody on Valve’s Nice List – as per its Frostivus 2023 replace announcement – can sit up for numerous festive treats and high quality of life enhancements. It’s much less of a jolly vacation for those that’ve been positioned on Valve’s Naughty List, nevertheless: King Kringle is now doing the rounds along with his ban hammer to “pulverise the smurf accounts of all the naughty boys and girls, before handing out penalties to their associated main accounts.”
Following Valve’s brutal culling of over 90,000 smurf accounts again in September, the corporate says it is “continued to invest in player behaviour monitoring” and shall be handing out nonetheless punishments for smurf accounts and different “questionable choices”, together with “bad actors…playing like jerks, ruining games and losing behaviour score because of it, then hiring behaviour score farmers to drive it back up.”
“If you’re on the Naughty List, we’ve got great news for everybody else and bad news for you,” Valve explains, “because this year is gonna be a bloodbath.” Accordingly, Valve says its newest crackdown on cheaters has resulted in “many tens of thousands of smurf account bans” within the final day alone – however it’s the best way it has been handing out these bans that may’t assist however elevate a chuckle. Cheaters who’ve discovered their manner onto Valve’s Naughty List have (thanks PC Gamer) been firing up their sport in the previous few solely to obtain a festive present that, as soon as opened, reveals itself to be a “Highly Toxic Lump of Coal”.
“Your Dota account has been permanently banned for Smurfing, or other violations of the Steam Terms of Service,” recipients are informed within the absolute mic drop of a word accompanying their festive “treat”.
“As we’ve said before,” Valve provides in its Frostivus replace launch notes, “smurfing (and other negative behaviour) makes matches worse, and we want to make sure your matches are as good as possible as we head into the new year. So we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Frostivus Update! Except smurf accounts, who we assume will not enjoy the update as they choke on their richly-deserved coal-flavoured just desserts.”