"Overwatch" Director Jeff Kaplan recently shared his thoughts and opinions in a Battle.net forum thread entitled "Smurfing is cheating. Stop downplaying it." Unfortunately for any "Overwatch" fan and player expecting some quick action from Blizzard with regards to the topic, Kaplan actually doesn't see the said issue as much of a big deal.

He started by defining what is smurfing and contrasting smurfing with the likes of boosting, which, as Kaplan defines, is when a high-ranking Competitive player attempts to boost and carry a lower-skilled partner into a higher tier. Kaplan then said that boosting is bad, and Blizzard is aggressively working on preventing and punishing it.

But in with regards to smurfing, for Kaplan, it's a different matter. According to what Kaplan wrote, "Smurfing isn't really that big of an issue."

"For example, one of the Pro "Overwatch" players created a 'smurf account' and was using the said account to stream "Overwatch" games. The system was able to watch his MMR internally and compared it to his main account."

"Within 15 games, his main and smurf MMR's were equal. There is a very bad perception of smurfing, but the reality of it is, skilled players more likely move rapidly out of lower skilled situations than casual players."

According to PC Gamer, Kaplan also highlighted scenarios where players have been blamed for smurfing, when it actually wasn't the case, thus further complicating the issue. This is the reason why Kaplan claims that smurfing really isn't much of an issue since smurfs are just good players who play lower ranked games in order to progress, where when they do, they get out of that lower level way faster than others.

According to Face Punch, despite all the explanation that Kaplan made in the said forum thread, not everyone has been satisfied with his conclusion, but overall, majority of the ones who engaged in the post expressed their appreciation for the response, as well as on the knowledge that Blizzard is, at least aware, of the situation of Smurfing in "Overwatch."

Kaplan ended his post by saying that the "Overwatch" team will always be looking towards making the game better for the players and the community overall.

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