Valve has taken a big step in stopping players of "DotA 2" from cheating in the game by creating secondary accounts and taking advantage of other players at lower skill levels. Next month, "DotA 2" will now require players to submit their phone numbers to be eligible in a ranked matchmaking party.
According to Ars Technica, Valve will be making changes in "DotA 2" to avoid smurfing, which described as creating secondary accounts to play against other gamers who have lower skill levels. This provides unfair advantages to players of "DotA 2."
However, Valve will begin eliminating smurfing in "DotA 2" by requiring players to register a valid phone number that can be tied to their account. This makes sure that each player only has one account in the game so that expert gamers in "DotA 2" will not be able to outsmart others by disguising themselves in a novice account.
The official blog for "DotA 2" has already announced it on their wall, indicating that their new changes will maintain one of the core components of the game, which is quality matchmaking.
Starting May 4th, "DotA 2" will deem all accounts with no valid phone number as ineligible to enter ranked plays. In the meantime, players can start registering their numbers to ensure that their account will be eligible to join matchmaking pools.
Gamers might think that they can just register and unregister phone numbers easily. However, it was pointed out that when a phone number is taken down from an account, there will be a three-month waiting period before the number can be linked to a new account.
Aside from this, Valve will also be implementing several other changes that involve Solo Queue, Party MMR, matchmaking behavior, and regional matchmaking.
For regional ranked matchmaking, it will no longer be open to South Africa, India, and Dubai. According to the post, servers in these regions will be updated to house unranked players as the population continuously grows.
