A bunch of Dota 2’s most toxic players have been banned this week, developer Valve said in an update on the Dota 2 blog. Banned players are receiving decades-long bans, and most of the community is delighted.
Valve said its latest ban wave includes multiple violations, starting with players that have “exceptionally low behavior scores.” (Behavior scores, naturally, are tied to behavior in Dota 2 — players are ranked for how they interact with teammates in Dota 2.) Other bans were issued for those who’ve bought or sold Steam accounts to fake a higher or lower rank and for players that have used “exploits to gain advantage over other players.”
Valve said it’ll start issuing, without notice, weekly bans with a refined detection algorithm for “abusive behaviors” in Dota 2. Bans issued from now on will also permanently blacklist the phone number associated with the account, which means it’s a hard ban to get around.
On social media and in forums, Dota 2 players are celebrating the massive ban wave. Plenty of newly banned Dota 2 players have posted in frustration and confusion regarding their bans, only to be met with players winning to take them on. Dota 2 players are responding to banned players by posting the offender’s behavior score — often very low — as a rebuttal. “It’s so satisfying to see toxic assholes complain,” one Reddit user said. “Thanks Valve for this Kreygasm week.” (Kreygasm is a Twitch emote used to denote “an intense feeling of elation,” according to Know Your Meme.)
Others are celebrating by imagining a world wherein the banned Dota 2 players are forced to play Valve’s beleaguered card game Artifact to reduce their time. “Just make Artifact to be Dota’s low priority games,” a Reddit user wrote. Another user suggested stuffing all the banned players into the regular low priority queue — where low behavior score players are sent — to play together in hell for their length of their bans. There’s also a Reddit thread with a thought experiment on what a tournament with all these banned players would look like: a mess, that’s what.
The reality is, though, that these toxic Dota 2 players may never get unbanned. A lot of these bans are listed until Jan. 1, 2038, which is the highest date Valve likely could enter. (It’s an issue similar to the Y2K problem.) It’s more likely that these are permanent bans for Dota 2’s most toxic players. Polygon has reached out to Valve for clarification.