How to drastically reduce the population of smurfs and bots
Tie account creation to something more substantial than an email address, like a phone number.
6 Comments
No.
This is how you drastically reduce the ability of legitimate players to join the game, without cutting down on bots or smurfs at all, because technically savvy people can spoof those in various ways.
Not everyone is an entitled, privileged american kid that gets a cellphone at 14.
like ppl alrdy said, not everyone owns/wants to own a phone. im 23 and i have a phone for emergency. but if it wasnt for that i'd sell it.
They're probably not talking about NA, as the rest of the world may very well be different depending on where you are. Though this was true for me for a while too, not even that long ago, when I had no need for a phone and decent internet.
This post is relevant only to NA. Like I said, different regions already have different account creation requirements. In some regions, for example, they're tied to government issued IDs.
https://www.obtgame.com/blog/register-play-league-legend-korea/
As far as the US is concerned, 91% of Americans have phones. Those that don't consist mostly of the very old and technologically challenged and those in rural areas with poor cell reception and access to internet, both of which are well outside of League of Legend's target demographic.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/06/06/cell-phone-ownership-hits-91-of-adults/
Also, it's much harder to sell a smurf account, especially one that is built off of a smurfed phone number, because unlike with an email address, it's much harder to give the phone number along with the account.