Overwatch 2 has a severe smurfing problem, and it’s sitting in plain sight. The top 500 list of players sports a selection of smurf accounts all the way to the top—and they’re not even trying to hide it.
Yazan “YZNSA” Alsubhi is known as one of the best Overwatch players in the world. The Saudi-Arabian is currently the highest-ranked damage player in the European top 500—he was also number two through to 10.
As of writing, YZNSA currently holds every spot in the top 10, except for rank eight. Blizzard introduced a feature in early October 2022 which forced all new accounts to be bound to one phone number—meaning he either owns at least 10 phones or bought every single account.
Accounts called “YZNSA3” and “YZNSA5” leading up to “YZNSA22” are all on the top 10 list, each using the same hero selection. This means he’s not only smurfing, but he is using his mains in the process—with one Hanzo discrepancy.
Smurfing has been deemed cheating in various esports like Dota 2 and VALORANT, however, the Overwatch 2 developers don’t consider it an offense worthy of banning. This even extends to their in-game conduct rules, where the term “smurf” or “smurfing” is nowhere to be found.
This hasn’t stopped the community from begging the developers to tackle the issue.
Players have called for Bronze to Grandmaster content to be banned altogether as it advocates a smurfing mentality. YZNSA himself has streams tailored to this type of content.
Despite Blizzard developers calling smurfing “the bane of (their) existence” via a March 2023 stream, there is no indication the issue will disappear anytime soon. It seems players will have to put up with undeniably talented players destroying them in their competitive games.
