Despite Riot Games’ continued efforts to foster a more balanced ranked experience, VALORANT’s competitive grind remains as frustrating as ever. While issues like blatant inflation and cheaters have seen meaningful improvement, lower-Elo lobbies, particularly Platinum and below, still often feel like high-rank matches in pace and precision.
And we all know the likely culprit: smurfs. But the real question isn’t just who’s to blame. It’s why Riot’s systems, including automatic smurf detection, quick MMR calibration, penalties for boosting, and even two-factor authentication, haven’t delivered noticeable relief. Which leads us to an age-old debate:
Does Riot genuinely want to eliminate smurfs and account sharing in VALORANT—or are these systems more about optics than impact? And while much of the issue can be attributed to smurfs flooding the ladder, the MMR and RR systems share part of the blame.
