Dota 2: Valve is shipping permanent bans in Christmas bundles

Banning trolls and cheaters can be fun too, at least that’s what we understand from Valve’s new initiative, which is sending users time-limited bans. steamspecifically for players Dota 2contained in the gods Christmas parcels.

More and more creative developers

Valve isn’t the first to prey on annoying users with impromptu initiatives like this. For example, the developers of Call of Duty: Warzone punished many cheaters by cutting off their parachutes so they couldn’t reach the ground alive, while Rockstar Games made some cheaters in GTA Online literally explode.

However, Valve has taken it to the next level, wrapping the permanent ban in adorable Christmas packages.

The seasonal initiative was discovered by Mason Venne, a professional Dota 2 player who found a gift from Valve when opening the game on Steam. But Father Newell did not bring him anything good. In fact, even real coal would have been preferable in this case, since when he opened it he found toxic coal and was banned indefinitely for “smurfing”, i.e. playing with a secondary account for bypassing skill-related matchmaking rules. . Of course, Venne isn’t the only one to receive Valve’s gift. the Dota2 subreddit Full of similar reports.

Valve mentioned “gifts” in the update Frost virus 2023which should therefore be limited to Dota 2. Steam users are unlikely to receive similar gifts in the event of a ban, but you never know.

Smurfing is the scourge of online multiplayer gaming, with some very powerful players ruining the game for newbies by disguising themselves as newbies to humiliate them. In September, Valve announced that it had banned 90,000 Dota 2 accounts Smurf.