"Smurfing" refers to high-level players using borrowed accounts or other means to enter low-level matches and crush inexperienced players.
Because "smurfing" not only affects the fairness of game matches but also greatly disrupts the in-game experience for other players—thus, in any game's player community, "smurfing" is publicly resisted and condemned by most people.
But current Overwatch is an exception.
Specifically, excluding the current situation where Korean Overwatch players go to the NA server to smurf.
Recently, a post on Reddit circulated in Overwatch communities worldwide. It大致ly stated that some Korean YouTubers and players actively went to the NA server to smurf and mock NA players' skill levels.
The first video posted showed Korean players executing impressive kills against North American players with new heroes, followed by clips of NA players raging and questioning them in chat. Coupled with a suggestive title, although the uploader didn't explicitly say "smurfing," the video's bias was quite obvious.
Translation: FK, you don't even need skill, just click your mouse for triple kills. Is it really that fun to ruin everyone's game experience with an overpowered character?
However, most Korean comments in the video section didn't condemn this Korean YouTuber but instead applauded his "cross-server smurfing" behavior, even mocking NA players for deserving it.
After this post spread to other regional player communities, most people also supported the behavior of "Korean players smurfing in NA," with the majority opinion being "Yes, that's how you should smurf, it's time to increase the intensity for NA players."
Why is "smurfing," an egregious behavior that should be condemned by all, now receiving collective approval from Overwatch players?
Simply put, this is because many players believe recent Overwatch balance patches are terrible, blaming NA server players—they think developers mainly reference NA server data for hero balance adjustments, but NA players' skill levels are notoriously low, meaning NA match data doesn't accurately reflect each character's true strength. Thus, balance adjustments based on NA data naturally turn out poorly.
Moreover, applying this logic explains many balance issues—
For instance, why has Reinhardt, the head of the "Nine Gates of Hell," only received trivial adjustments over the years, never getting the massive buffs needed to escape the bench?
Because only NA tank players still like cosplaying as Crusaders, choosing two primitive Reinhardts to clash with cold weapons on the ground in an era where heroes like D.Va, Hazard, Freja, Pharah, Illari, Juno, Emery, and Sojourn can dominate from the sky, hence "Reinhardt performs well across all ranks, has a high pick rate, win rate near 50%, no need for major adjustments."
Meanwhile, Mercy, another support hero despised on the Asian server for being weak, has also gained favor among NA players. Mercy's pick rate in NA Quick Play even surpassed Kiriko, the S-tier support. Because NA players have a soft spot for Mercy, she has long been denied significant buffs, constantly oscillating between buffs and nerfs, and even received a minor nerf in the latest patch.
Kiriko, whose pick rate and win rate in NA are lower than Mercy's, isn't overly dominant despite having damage, cleanse, teleport, and team buffs.
Therefore, in the April balance patch, we reduced Kiriko's teleport distance, and as compensation, increased her healing output, keeping her overall strength balanced.
The result? This change directly filled Kiriko's last gap in healing output—
You're right, but this is Kiriko, a hero with 225 HP, 89 HPS, sticky heals, damage, wall climbing, teleport with only a 7-second cooldown. Her Bell can provide group damage reduction and cleanse. Her Kunai bullets are thicker than telephone poles, dealing 120 damage on headshots. And when she uses her Ultimate, she boosts group attack speed, movement speed, and even skill acceleration, shouting "Kitsune no Kaki Kimeoto Ki Hanate" ahhhhh!
Thus, Kiriko became the T0 support hero on the Asian server, banned or picked in every match, with a ranking pick rate far ahead, even exceeding 50%.
Even after the April balance changes, Kiriko remained so dominant that, due to her unremarkable stats in NA data, she only received one trivial minor nerf in subsequent patches, remaining stealthily strong in the latest version, firmly sitting atop the support rankings.
If you don't pick Kiriko at the start, you've already lost half the battle. Support players who don't pick Kiriko will likely face situations where they either switch to Kiriko because they can't win otherwise or do so under pressure from teammates. Not picking Kiriko as a support is like not reading Dream of the Red Chamber among the Four Great Classical Novels; it shows a lack of gaming skill and self-cultivation, an inability to understand the refined elegance of her Ofuda mechanics, seeing only the superficial collaborative skins without grasping the profound Kitsune essence. Such players are stuck at Silver rank, destined for a relatively unsuccessful life.
Besides Overwatch's own balance issues, the stereotype that "developers only look at NA data for balance" has been proven in many games, just like the notion that "NA players are generally bad." It's natural for Asian server players to think this way.
Take Blizzard's own game Hearthstone as an example. For a long time, the mainstream ladder deck strength in EU/NA servers has generally been weaker than in Asian/Chinese servers. Some super-strong decks that dominated rankings in Chinese servers were nowhere to be found in mainstream NA/EU decks. To force developers to nerf toxic decks, Chinese players launched multiple expeditions, dominating the NA ladder environment with these decks. The effects were immediate, and soon after, the developers released corresponding nerf patches.
With theoretical data support and practical success stories, it's quite reasonable for Korean players to travel to NA servers for battle and gain support from players everywhere—Overwatch designers, do you understand the pain of Asian server players? Since you only balance based on NA data, I'll go smurf in NA to make NA players feel my pain! Only by changing the NA environment and showing you the reality buried under false data can you understand the true strength of each hero, leading to reasonable balance patches for Overwatch!
You might ask: Smurfing ultimately ruins the game experience for ordinary players. Are there no other solutions besides smurfing?
Actually, before Korean players used the radical method of "smurfing in NA," they had tried other methods in another battle regarding balance adjustments. You might have heard of this method—the "Mauga Pact."
Simply put, when Overwatch changed its name to Overwatch 2, the main game mode shifted from 6v6 to 5v5, and team compositions changed from 2 tanks to 1 tank, making Tank a powerful position dominating the battlefield. But after numerous patches of nerfs and when healing reduction became a passive for all heroes, Tanks gradually lost their dominance, becoming mere zone controllers, able to pick only a few usable characters.
But even with reduced capabilities, the responsibility remains huge—tank players still need to position, hold the front line, push payloads, capture points, watch the backline, and deal with flankers, keeping busier than Tom Cat during fights.
And the new hero "Sojourn," with high damage and auto-aim, was launched right when the "Mauga Pact" was gaining momentum, making already precarious Tank players even easier to instantly evaporate.
Thus, Tank became a role with generally unappealing characters, high pressure, complex mechanics, little positive feedback, instant loss upon mistake, blame from teammates, and chat mockery of "Tank Diff," making it a punishing position.
Because the Tank experience is so poor, few players are willing to choose this role. So, even though in 5v5 mode, a team only needs one Tank player, halving the requirement compared to other roles, there are still never enough Tanks, always being drafted last-minute to fill the slot at match start.
If you've committed countless sins in life but still want to enter heaven, play Tank in Overwatch—just endure a few matches as a tank, and Satan will owe you several lifetimes of merit, while Jesus will come down from the cross to let you hang there instead.
Thus, the "Mauga Pact," initiated by Korean players and responded to by Asian and some Chinese server players, was born—once Tank players are unfairly blamed, they immediately choose Mauga to duel the opposing Tank, eliminating the so-called "Tank Diff" and letting teammates engage in 4v4 battles to figure out who the real weak link is. Opposing Tanks, suffering from the environment for a long time, usually cooperate by selecting the same Mauga for mutual shooting.
So, after Asian server tank players expressed their resistance through the "Mauga Pact," did the developers notice the plight of tanks and buff tank heroes?
The answer is—tank heroes not only didn't receive buffs in the patch after the "Mauga Pact," but were further nerfed.
Fortunately, the developers heard the feedback that "Sojourn deals high damage and poses a big threat to Tanks," so they nerfed Lady Sojourn... by reducing the volume of her weapon shots?
Sorry, Lady Sojourn, the loud firing sound of my weapon interfered with your damage output, preventing you from going all out. My apologies.
Thus, all efforts by tank players in the "Mauga Pact" were utterly futile.
At the time, Overwatch pro player Guxue stated that the "Mauga Pact" on the Asian server was just self-indulgence; to truly get the developers' attention, they should have done it on the NA server.
Although this was just Guxue's hindsight, you can't deny he was correct.
Since gentle methods didn't work, more radical measures had to be taken. Thus, what started as a benign protest aimed at leveling the playing field by throwing games escalated into malicious smurfing that ruined opponents' experiences.
Due to time constraints, I couldn't verify the exact number of Korean players who went to NA servers to smurf or how many NA players were affected before finishing this article, but comments from various player communities indirectly confirm that "smurfing in NA" indeed happened.
Translation: I was wondering why there were more Korean names in NA servers, so that's the reason. Indeed, I see them often.
Perhaps, compared to the舆论 in player communities, the actual scale of smurfing wasn't that large. But the fact that smurfing, a behavior mostly resisted by players, gained support in this incident highlights the severity of Overwatch's balance issues and the deep-seated resentment between the player community and the developers.
On the surface, the "Smurfing in NA" incident seems like a conflict between players from different regions, but the root cause lies in the developers' failure to balance game numbers. Ultimately, players supporting "smurfing in NA" don't endorse the act itself but hope to convey messages about "game imbalance" and "neglect of the Asian server." However, to make their voices heard, they inadvertently made NA players the victims.
Finally, no matter how justified the reasons, smurfing is wrong. If the Overwatch developers fail to address the demands of Asian server players, such radical protests will likely intensify.