More On: Dota 2

Hey, can I have your number? That’s what Dota 2 will be asking players in ranked matches after May 4th. But Dota 2 doesn’t want to take you on a disappointing dinner date. Dota 2 won’t take you to Red Lobster, hog those delicious cheddar bay biscuits, and go on about how “people are too sensitive these days.” Dota 2 is more concerned about “smurfing,” or when multiple accounts are created by a single user. 

Smurfing is usually done by veteran players posing as beginners, or trying to get around being placed in low ranking matches due to bad behavior. Essentially everything done through smurfing is super rude.

And while Valve admits that a linked phone number will not eliminate multiple accounts for a single user entirely, they still hope to “add just enough friction to this process that the number of players doing this will be noticeably reduced.”

This isn’t the first effort by Valve to curb toxic behavior in Dota, a game riddled with it, but it is a rather sweeping measure in their ongoing battle with a sizable portion of their user base hell bent on ruining a game for everyone else. For a full list of the updates included in the patch, check out the blog post here.