FACEIT ban 300,000 Smurfs in two weeks

Two weeks after releasing their FACEIT 2.0 update, FACEIT announced on December 5th that the platform has already banned 300,000 "smurf" acocunts from the pugging service. The change by FACEIT to take a hardline stance against players using multiple accounts on their service is an attempt to even the playing field and comes alongside verification features intended to improve transparency in matchmaking and to allow players to know who they're facing on the server.

According to FACEIT, these changes have also refunded players around 100,000,000 Elo Points, with the number likely growing even higher since December 5th.

Overall, the introduction and identity verification, anti-smurfing features, and other QOL improvements are part of a wider effort by ESL FACEIT Group to draw users to their platform and increase the overall player account heading into 2025. According to FACEIT, these gradual improvements have resulted in the service seeing a 2.4x higher player count from November 2023 to November 2024.

You can read FACEIT's most recent patch notes here.