EAis seemingly working on a way to quickly and reliably detect smurfing in online multiplayer games, according to a recent patent listing. Smurfing is a situation in which a highly skilled, high-ranked competitive player sets up a new account or character to play against comparatively worse low-ranked players by spoofing the game’s matchmaking features.
The issue with smurfing has become so serious, broadly speaking, thatBlizzard askedOverwatch 2players to stop smurfingearlier this year. This example shows that there’s a huge number of players looking to play against those who cannot feasibly compete against them, and there’s currently no realistic way to police such behavior.
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Now, however,Electronic Artsmay have a new development in the pipeline. According to one of the company’s recent patent listings, it is looking for a serious solution to the smurfing problem, attempting to identify a set of gameplay metrics that would assist in figuring out who may be smurfing in low-skill online matches. The patent describes leveraging metadata sourced through gameplay to stealthily tag players as newbies or veterans in the background, and these would possibly include “accuracy, attack placement, damage caused and/or taken, spawn selection” and so on. The described system would seemingly work alongside regular matchmaking, without making itself apparent to the players in any way.
Smurfing isn’t a new concept, but the issue appears to have been getting more pervasive as time goes on.Valorantattempted to curb smurfingyears ago, as the game’s competitive nature made it particularly prone to situations where highly competitive players would want to bump up their stats by going against low-ranking players instead of those who are roughly at the same skill level.
In more general terms, Electronic Arts seems to be looking at ways to make the multiplayer battlespace a healthier, less toxic experience across the board. For example, one of the company’s late 2022 patents sets upEA to ban players for teaming up with enemies. All these newly patented features and systems aren’t likely to be overly relevant any time soon, as it’s going to take a while before EA’s developers can spin them out into different competitive titles.
It’s almost certain, however, that EA’s live service games would be the first to receive these matchmaking upgrades as soon as they’re made available.Apex Legendsis infamous for its matchmaking exploits, for one, and its popularity guarantees that there’s a substantial number of players attempting to smurf at any given point in time. For now, players can do nothing but wait and, in some cases, report the obvious offenders.
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