Smurfing and Its Effect on MMR

Smurfing is when experienced players create new accounts to play against less skilled opponents. They do this to stomp lower ranked games, avoid long queue times, or just mess around without risking their main account’s ranking. MMR (Matchmaking Rating) is the hidden number that determines who you play against, and smurfs throw a wrench into this entire system because the game thinks they’re new players when they’re actually way better than their rank suggests.

Why Smurfing Breaks the Matchmaking System

MMR works on a simple idea: you win, your number goes up, you lose, it goes down. The system needs time to figure out where someone actually belongs. And here’s the problem. A smurf account starts at the bottom or middle of the ladder, so the system places them against players who genuinely belong there. The smurf then wins 20 games in a row before the MMR catches up.

During those 20 games, real players on the enemy team get stomped and lose MMR they probably shouldn’t have lost. Their teammates might gain MMR from getting carried without actually improving. So you’ve got this ripple effect where one smurf account corrupts the accuracy of maybe 200 different players’ ratings before the account reaches its true skill level.

The matchmaking algorithm assumes players improve gradually over hundreds of games. It doesn’t account for someone who’s already played 3000 hours on another account suddenly appearing as a “fresh” player.

The Real Impact on Regular Players

Let’s talk about what actually happens in your games when smurfs show up.

You lose games you had no business losing. When a Diamond player shows up in your Silver lobby, you’re not learning anything. You’re just watching someone who’s fundamentally better at the game run circles around everyone. Your MMR drops, and now you’re playing against people worse than you, which creates another imbalance going the other direction.

Ranked anxiety gets worse. People already stress about climbing, and knowing that any game could have a smurf makes that worse. Some players stop playing ranked altogether because they feel like their rank doesn’t actually reflect their skill anymore.

New players quit. This one hurts the most. Someone picks up a competitive game, gets excited to learn, and then runs into smurf after smurf in their first week. They think everyone is that good and give up. The game loses players who might have stuck around for years.

How Games Try to Deal With Smurfs

Most competitive games have tried something:

1. Phone number verification makes creating new accounts annoying but doesn’t stop determined smurfs
2. Smurf detection algorithms try to identify accounts winning too much too fast and boost their MMR quickly
3. Hardware bans target repeat offenders but people just spoof their hardware IDs
4. Smurf queues put suspected smurfs in lobbies together so they only ruin each other’s games

None of these solutions work perfectly. Riot Games, for example, has been tweaking their LoL MMR system for years to detect smurfs faster, but the problem persists because you can’t really prove intent. Maybe someone is smurfing, or maybe they just had a really good day.

The Arguments Smurfs Make (And Why They’re Weak)

Smurfs usually justify themselves with a few common excuses.

“I want to play with my friends who are lower rank.” Cool, but you could just play normals. Or the game could add a flex queue with wider rank allowances. You don’t need to make a new account and ruin ranked for everyone else.

“Queue times are too long at high elo.” That’s a real problem, but the solution shouldn’t involve ruining games for people in lower ranks. That’s just pushing your inconvenience onto others.

“It helps me practice new champions.” Practice mode exists. Normal games exist. You’re practicing at the expense of other people’s competitive experience.

What This Means for Competitive Integrity

The whole point of a ranked system is to give everyone fair games where both teams have roughly equal chances of winning. Smurfs undermine this completely. When your MMR doesn’t reflect your actual skill because you’ve been boosted by smurfs or beaten down by them, the system fails at its core purpose.

And there’s a psychological component too. Players start blaming smurfs for every loss, even when they legitimately got outplayed. It creates this paranoid atmosphere where nobody trusts their own rank anymore.

Can We Actually Fix This?

Probably not entirely. As long as competitive games exist, some people will want to dominate weaker opponents. But games can make it harder and less appealing.

Faster MMR adjustment for accounts showing unusual skill patterns would help. Making account creation more friction heavy without being annoying for legitimate new players is tricky but possible. And honestly, just publicly shaming the behavior might shift community attitudes over time.

The reality is that smurfing exists in a weird moral gray area. It’s not cheating in the traditional sense. Nobody’s using aimbots or wallhacks. But it damages the ranked ecosystem in ways that affect thousands of players per smurf account. Until developers figure out better solutions, we’re stuck dealing with a system that’s fundamentally compromised by people who think their entertainment matters more than everyone else’s competitive experience.