Jack

Punishment, from what I've seen is:

1.) You're banned for the remainder of the Competitive Season; and

2.) Your rank will be reset.

That second part seems.... Unwise to me, however, for reasons that should be obvious.

Actually, they're BOTH types of smurfing. Smurfing is the simple act of deliberately playing outside your rank, for any reason at all, regardless of the "main or alt" discussion-- that's the very reason it's a ToS violation.

And who's to say that there aren't smurfs out there who have fun playing below their rank? The ones who derank to play with the homies, the "educational Bronze to Smurflord" trend content creators, dickheads who just like making other people's day worse, the list goes on; there are plenty of these players out there, and to act like there aren't, or that they aren't getting exactly what they're looking for out of the experience is willfully ignorant at best.

I do believe they need to rethink their penalties, however; a rank reset is the opposite of the right answer for this. A better solution might be to, if a player is suspected of smurfing after multiple games, bump them into a far higher-ranked match for their next one. Their options, if they are indeed smurfing, are either play appropriately for the higher rank or int throw. Instinctually, you'd be hard-pressed to fake being Gold or Plat if you're under the pressure of a GM lobby, so the results are revealing either way.

Those are really handy for my 110% Chameleon build (where you're completely invisible, rendering enemies entirely unable to fight you), or the Strength build that lets you carry like 1800lbs.