The smurf problem is just not with lower ranked players, I hear lots of stories that even GM players suffer by the toxic nature of most smurfs. You see with smurf accounts you can act toxic all you want and if you do get banned. You just buy a new account, by all these silly discount deals that is barely any money.
Then people say “but more people play on that PC” I say and ? then they actually now what kind of true personalty their son, husband or whatever has. They can blame that individual for lacking the social skills for acting like a rotten person.
Or they say “they just use an program to change IP” well maybe and even then most won’t go the trouble with that. And i don’t know how software and such is developed but perhaps they can even found out someone is using a program like that. Anyway even if some do use an program I belief you still got a lot of these toxic smurfs removed.
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What about other people that use the same IP in the property? Like I could have housemates or siblings that also play the game but an IP ban could screw them over unfairly. Of course you could say well that’s up to the smurf to know what they are doing to begin with and it might stop them from doing it, but players (housemate, siblings etc) that are not a part of those activities pay Blizz to access the game (and servers) so if they can’t play it because of what someone else did, that would be a lot of refunds to be issued on Blizz’s part for the ones not getting the service.
^
I allready explained you can blame that rotten personality of a housemate/siblings you have.
But your housemates/siblings are not responsible for you and how you behave, it’s really none of their business. From a business perspective it would have a negative effect on Blizz to blacklist unintended customers, not to mention what if the person moves house, the new occupants would be left with a ban that wasn’t intended for them.
For my part they could do an ID check (although ofc they wont do it)
The IP ban could also be temporarily then, those who life there now know what kind of person lives there. This could last for a week and after that give a perma ban towards the account who the ban was innately for.
I would be glad to actually find out if any of my siblings or other family, friends where acting like this. Not that anyone uses this PC then me but still I would not stand for this rotten behavior. And tell them never too use the PC until they short their attitude out.
That’s why you come up with such ideas. And is not even about using the same PC.
it shouldn’t happen and blizzard won’t make it happen
Wasn’t the initial enforcement tech meant to lock-out that PC ID, which I think was either based on the OS itself, or the IDs on the components, meaning those trying to circumvent a ban like this would have to build in essence a full new system (or getting a new OS key alongside a game key)
Must of been at least a few months after the first summer games event when they swapped to normal account locking for banned accounts.
If multiple accounts are being banned under the same IP, then you just have the system prevent new accounts registering game keys under that IP, if we’re going for the narrative of “Think of the housemates/rest of the family”
There is no good solution to the smurf problem. IP ban would create issues for multiple people wanting to play in the same household. One account per computer would cause the same issue with families who cannot afford a new computer for every account but every person wants there own account (so no one messes up your rank).
Also, Blizz will likely never ban smurfs. In the past, they have stated that they are fine with smurfs. The smurfs probably generate a lot of money to fund all of the free updates for everyone.
Although I will admit since the humble bundle issue there has been a huge smurf problem
That is a huge understatement, i even saw lvl’s 2’s and 4’s in the games i played 
Overwatch is and will forever be a game with the lowest amount of smurfs. Yet so many people complain.
The game is not free like most other competetive e-sports. Or has a very low general cost like cs:go.
Overwatch is still a multiple 2 digit dollar game. People might buy 1 smurf or a couple if you really play alot and do it for streaming, but all around the amount of people with a smurf of all players in the game is not that high, my estimate would be maybe at max 10% has 1 or more smurfs.
What about internet cafes?