Valve just made waves by slapping an unbelievably long ban on toxic Dota 2 players, and the community (minus those banned players, of course) is celebrating. The ban for Dota 2's "bad actors" was announced via the game's blog, along with a list of all the different infractions that could've caused one.
Dota 2 has a history of dealing with troublesome, even prejudiced players. The newly banned toxic players might never get the chance to show they've learned their lesson: the end date of each ban is set in 2038. That's a whopping 19-year ban for perpetrators of bad behavior, and Valve still hasn't clarified if 2038 is really the limit or if these are intended to be lifetime bans.
This isn't the only correction that Valve has made lately; back in August the company was dealing with release date abuse on Steam. Dota 2's huge multi-wave change came as part of the game's new Ranked season, and Valve isn't stopping with the crazy-long bans that have already been issued; the Dota 2 team has announced its ongoing plans for dealing with problem players.
Valve's latest round of bans dealt with players who had a track record of causing problems, such as those who had "exceptionally low behavior scores." Next up were users caught buying or selling Steam accounts in order to manipulate their rank, followed by players who use exploits to get an advantage over others and smurf accounts. Valve also says it'll be refining detection algorithms in the coming weeks, and handing out weekly bans (without advance notice) to those who fall under the aforementioned categories. Plus, phone numbers associated with banned accounts will now also be blacklisted, so disgruntled ban recipients will have a hard time avoiding their sentence.
Predictably, the rest of the upstanding and outspoken Dota 2 community is quite happy with these changes. Those upset at being banned have quickly posted to social media--and were just as quickly shut down by people who are all too happy to point out the reason for their plight. Over on Dota 2's Reddit, players quickly let toxic players know that the easiest way to avoid a ban was, naturally, just good behavior.
It's not surprising that people are relieved, given what a huge player Dota 2 is in the world of competitive esports. Either way, the rest of the community is eagerly waiting to see just how refined an algorithm Valve can put together--and hoping for even more progress in the future.
Dota 2 is available now for the PC.
Source: Dota 2 Blog