Riot Games has announced another move to reduce the number of smurft accounts in ranked games of Valorant, with the upcoming change in patch 1.13.
Smurfing, the act of a high-level player battling in a lower ranked account to get easier games, continues to be a problem in Riot's tacitcal shooter. Since Valorant is a free-to-play game, it's easy for players to create new accounts so they can grind at different accounts, or have multiple high-ranked accounts with no added costs. As long as players register with a new email address, they can start fresh in ranked games after completing 10 Unrated games.
But now Riot has announced the next step to reduce smurfing. The change may seem simple, but patch 1.13 should help reduce the ever-growing number of smurf accounts in Valorant.
Once the next major update arrives, all Valorant accounts will need to win 10 Unrated games rather than just playing 10 Unrated games before they can join competitive ranked games. While it's still possible for smurfs to show up in lower-ranked games, it would take them longer for accounts to qualify for ranked games since they will have to win 10 Unrated games instead of just grininding 10 games quickly.
Riot's Game Producer 'npc Sara' said that "[they'll] be doing this in the next patch." Although there's no set date for patch 1.13 yet, it's been three weeks since the latest major update, so expect it to arrive soon.
Patch 1.13 might be the last major update coming before Valorant launches Episode 2 in mid-January 2021.
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