Valve’s Recent Crackdown on Poor Behavior in Dota 2 Sparks Griefing Issues
Valve’s recent efforts to combat smurfing and improve player behavior in Dota 2 have received widespread praise. However, the removal of certain features for players with low behavior scores has inadvertently caused a new problem – griefing using Dota’s pause system.
After the changes were implemented, players with a behavior score below 5,000 lost the ability to pause and unpause matches. Unfortunately, some players with malicious intent are now exploiting this feature to hold game lobbies hostage.
In one instance reported on Reddit, a player described how their teammate paused the match just as their ancient was about to be destroyed. This is a common tactic in Dota to frustrate the winning team and delay their victory. However, because everyone’s behavior score in the game was below 5,000, only the teammate who initiated the pause could unpause it.
Even though the affected players reported the teammate who abused the pause feature, the issue remains unresolved. The game lobby took appropriate action against the offender, but it highlights the need for Valve to address this oversight.
As a result, players are forced to abandon matches, causing their behavior score to plummet even further. This creates a dangerous cycle where the only solution is to hope that a “well-behaved” player unpauses the game.
Another incident, which has since been removed from Reddit, involved a match being held up for over three hours. A player shared that their opponent simply paused the game and went to eat. The chat logs from the match, available on Dotabuff, confirm the extended pause, revealing that the culprit even took a nap during the delay, waking up after 10 minutes of game time to finish the match.
Valve introduced changes to the behavior score system and included a separate communication score in the August 30 client update. Features such as ranked access, post-game item drops, and voice chat are disabled for players with low scores.
Additionally, the client now notifies players when action is taken based on their reports and attempts to match them with players they have commended in past matches.
Valve also implemented real-time chat processing, muting players who are found to be abusive during games.
We hope that Valve reevaluates the pause restrictions because while it’s important to punish misbehaving Dota players, sitting through a paused match for three hours may be too extreme.
Valve, Dota 2, behavior score, pause system, griefing, smurfing, player behavior, client update