Smurfs are nothing new, but they’re running rampant inMarvel Rivals. This means that lobbies arefull of players who should be in much higher ranks, letting their team tear through their opponents. Alternatively, if a smurf gets too high a rank, they might throw a match to go back down, or generally just not care about the result of the game since it doesn’t affect their main account.
But finally, NetEase is taking action against smurfs in Marvel Rivals. With the new season starting today, some players are being warned that they are suspected of smurfing and told that they will face penalties if this continues. We don’t know what these penalties will be, but hopefully, it means that this ever-frustrating issue with Marvel Rivals' competitive mode will be fixed soon.
Watch Out, Smurfs, Marvel Rivals Is Coming After You
This was spotted today by Twitch streamer Ottr, who got a smurf warning while live streaming Marvel Rivals. Here, we can see that this happened while taking on the challenge of reaching Celestial rank with the new duelist character, Phoenix.
The warning message reads: “The system has detected that you recently have been Smurfing. We urge you to cease this behavior immediately! If you continue down this path, we will impose further penalties. For further inquiries, please reach out to our customer support.”
So, there were no penalties this time around, but the game is now letting players know that it’s onto them. As for how this was detected, there’s a chance it comes from player reports, since we were recently given the option toreport any players that we suspect of smurfing. Otherwise, maybe the game gets a little suspicious if a brand new account is dominating in competitive matches, since I can’t imagine many newbies are doing that.
We will have to wait and see if this manages to improve the quality of competitive matches. At the very least, NetEase is aware of the problem.
