Valve is going to require DOTA 2 players to register a valid phone number in an effort to combat “Smurfing”—a term used when a secondary lower level account is used by an experienced player to play against players of lower skill level deliberately. Players have until May 4th to attach a phone number to their DOTA 2 account and it will only accept verified phone numbers, excluding phone numbers which are available for free generated by some internet messaging services.
According to Valve, the idea behind the requirement is that it will take much more effort to get a valid phone number than it is to create a new DOTA 2 account just so some experienced players could beat on noobs. Users can change phone numbers associated with the account, but there will be a three-month waiting period instituted before that removed number can be registered again for another account.
More users playing only on their primary account is a good thing according to Valve, as it will have a positive effect on both ranked and unranked matchmaking. At the same time, Valve is also making some regional changes including stopping ranked matchmaking in South Africa, India and Dubai. Valve will update these servers as the unranked populations in these regions grow to the critical mass needed to be able to support splitting the user base into ranked and unranked queues. There are some users in these regions which use the server for ranked matchmaking, but the low populations made them ideal targets for various ranked matchmaking abuses. For now, players in these regions will have to join the ranked matchmaking queues in one of the other nearby servers.
Smurfing is not exclusive for DOTA2….i myself had to play against players doing Smurfing in CoH1 yesterday.
There’s no problem to buy a new sim card just for $4. This requirement won’t protect against “smurfing”. Valve has different intentions.