Valve is handing out eight-year bans to low priority queue abusers

Low priority matchmaking in Dota 2 can be a real pain in the butt to get out of.

You don’t just get lumped in with leavers, toxic all chat flamers, and griefers who wouldn’t even think twice about dragging everyone else down with them. But you also have to win legitimate matchmaking games in order to escape the punishment queue.

That said, unless your connection to the servers really just isn’t that great, you probably deserve to be down there if you misbehave on a regular basis. And some people will do anything to get out of Dota 2 jail.

Valve is now cracking down on those abusing the low priority system, according to a post on the Dota 2 subreddit. Accounts caught using the so-called “low priority bot” method have received matchmaking bans of up to eight years.

The method in question involves opening multiple instances of the Dota 2 client, all of which are controlled using scripts in order to have nine dummy accounts. Those accoutns all queue at the same time as the account locked in low priority queue. This is typically done on a server with a small population in order to increase the chances of having the dummy accounts matched together properly.

These “bots” would do nothing but run their respective heroes mindlessly down the middle lane, allowing the offending player to quickly rack up gold and experience through multiple hero kills in quick succession.

The player’s own hero would thus snowball extremely hard, allowing them to secure the victory within a small amount of time. They would then rinse and repeat until the account is shored out of low-priority matchmaking.

This method has actually been a problem for quite some time now, but Valve has only recently started issuing long punishments to confirmed abusers.

Perhaps with the bans rolling out, abusers will think twice about trying to cheat the system and instead look towards fixing the root cause: Their in-game behavior.