Arteezy Reached Out to Valve, Expressing Dissatisfaction with the State of Dota 2 Matchmaking

Artur “Arteezy” Babaev reached out to the developers at Valve, expressing dissatisfaction with the quality of Dota 2 matchmaking due to smurf accounts.

The player shared his opinion on his personal X page.

“Hey, Valve! Why don’t you just declare Dota dead so we can lower our expectations? Most Immortal Draft lobbies still have players like this :(

I’d just start playing on a smurf account too, so I could stream ranked matches in the evening. Just like everyone else.

All my smurf accounts were banned by Valve (some of them were automatically caught up in the wave of smurf bans in September 2023, and a few accounts were manually banned by a Valve employee a week later).

It’s just not fun to stream Dota because every night I play with several smurf accounts, and the player pool in Immortal Draft is only about 350 people, so the matchmaking algorithm starts looking for players ranked 400–600 after just 15 minutes.

If smurfing were allowed in Dota, I wouldn’t care, because then I could do it too. Valve just needs to clarify the situation.”

According to Artur “Arteezy” Babaev, the problem lies not only in the presence of smurf accounts in high-rated matches but also in Valve’s lack of a consistent policy regarding such violations. The esports player believes that the developers need to clearly state their position: either continue to combat smurfing and ensure a level playing field for players, or revise the current restrictions.

As a reminder, Artur “Arteezy” Babaev previously shared his expectations for the release of the new Dota 2 patch.