Valorant player hits out at top streamers exploiting bots to buy smurf accounts

A Valorant player has hit out at top streamers enabling deranking bots in low elo Iron and Bronze lobbies so they can then purchase smurf accounts for content.

Challenge streams and videos, particularly ones in which Valorant players go from Iron to Radiant while placing specific restrictions on themselves, have become quite popular in the Valorant community.

Despite its popularity, however, such challenges have certainly come with their own controversies, particularly in the Overwatch community. Many view the situation as though streamers are ruining games for players who are on a completely different level.

One under-discussed aspect of these challenge streams and videos is how accounts are sourced. And unfortunately, lower elo lobbies in the Iron And Bronze ranks bear the brunt.

In a new video by Valorant player-coach and streamer, Woohoojin, they pledged to not stream ranked again after his stream encountered a team of bots. Not just once though, but multiple times, all of which he made out to be sold as smurf accounts.

The regular stream event sees Woohoojin coach a group of five Bronze players in a ranked game, giving them advice throughout the game on how they can improve.

However, the group was constantly being queued up against the same team filled with bot accounts who were intentionally throwing as to create Iron accounts so they can be sold off. At least, that’s the working theory.

It was because of this incident, and the fact he essentially cannot coach low elo players against a team filled with bots, that he pledged to cancel all future ranked streams and replace it with his community 10-man matches.

Woohoojin feels that top Valorant streamers are complicit in this, as the popularity of challenge streams incentivizes account sellers to bombard low elo lobbies with throwers so they can sell the accounts, and he also feels Riot doesn’t care about it.

“I’m only going to return to playing ranked if Riot stops looking the other way when it comes to these stupid challenge accounts,” he said. “These content creators should be playing their games in custom with willing participants, there’s no excuse.”

He goes on to point out that Riot has allegedly even unbanned streamers’ Iron accounts in the past so they can continue their challenges. “Smurfs don’t hold anyone back from reaching the rank they deserve… but they ruin the competitive experience and they waste everybody’s time.”