FACEIT has been cracking down on smurfing and multi-account abuse lately, leading to a massive 13,644 bans in a single day. The matchmaking service has long been a popular platform for competitive Counter-Strike gamers, and it remains this way for CS2. Back in the CS:GO days, many flocked there for 128-tick servers (versus Valve’s 64-tick ones), along with a more robust anti-cheat.

The days of complaining about Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) still aren’t over, leading fans to opt for alternative solutions, so this is exactly what FACEIT provides. It’s fair to say cheating isn’t completely eradicated, but the kernel-level FACEIT Anti-Cheat does a much more thorough job. The latest ban wave is focused on smurfs, but there’s still a steady amount of cheating-related bans.

30,000 bans in the last 30 days on FACEIT, with nearly half in a single day

One of FACEIT’s community managers took to Reddit yesterday to announce, “Today we banned 12,478 accounts for smurfing and multi-account abuse, using new detection methods that now run automatically”. Following the bans, FACEIT also says “20 million Elo has been restored to 544,098 players” – directly compensating those affected by a banned account in their game.

Now the day is over, we can see that July 27 saw 13,644 accounts in total being banned, meaning 91% of those were smurfing-related (purposely playing on a lower-rank account to face easier opponents). Just a single ban was related to cheating, while 181 bans were due to toxicity. There have been ~30,000 bans in the past 30 days, and nearly 242,000 in the past 12 months.

While Counter-Strike 2 remains the most popular game on the FACEIT platform, making up the majority of matches and community hubs – by a large margin – the service also supports many other titles, such as Overwatch, Team Fortress 2, and Rocket League. The bans will also restrict access to any of these games, but we suspect nearly all of them are related to Counter-Strike.

The ban wave comes ahead of FACEIT Season 9, which starts on August 5. Any Elo that was restored as a result of the bans will count towards the new season.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.