As I understand it, most MOBAs are unfriendly places, especially the larger ones like Dota 2. In an announcement made by Valve in a dev blog related to matchmaking updates, things may get a whole lot friendlier thanks to a reportedly huge ban waves issued against the MOBA’s most toxic of players.
The bans in question are threefold: The first applies to players with “exceptionally low behavior scores,” which were said in the dev blog to be “too big of a tax on the rest of the community and are not wanted.” The second applies to players who have been purposefully buying or selling Dota 2 accounts to achieve a higher or lower ranking, and the third applies to exploit users. According to Polygon, some of these bans stretch on to as far as January 1st, 2038 — the longest possible length of time that can be applied to any account, which seems to indicate these are meant to be permanent bans.
The dev blog further promised to refine its algorithms to find these bad actors and issue weekly bans without advance notice to account holders. It then went on to explain that Dota 2 is working on the problem of smurfing, along with other matters related to matchmaking in ranked play such as role symmetry, updates to core and support ranks, and the addition of a role reporting system for those who draft against the role they queued for.
