Valve appears to be serious about improving the gameplay experience for Dota 2. It appears that an update is going to be implemented which will dish out some major ban waves, particularly for bad players. You heard that right, Valve is finally making serious moves on this issue.
So how are players going to be banned? For starters, players that have low behavior scores as sure to get banned. Despite being a small part of the community, Valve promised that it is going to do regular ban waves for these kinds of users. This is certainly good news to many players who have long dealt with toxic gamers.
The second is a bit technical as users that violate the Steam Service Agreement are also going to get banned. This ruling is mainly directed to users who buy and sell accounts. While not allowed, there have been cases where certain users bought accounts in order to get a higher or lower rank. This has resulted in negative play experiences for many players. Though this doesn't cover everything, Valve believes that they will manage to catch enough offenders.
That said, players that use exploits or hack are going to be banned. This is rather self-explanatory when you think about it.
Since this announcement from Valve, forums have been filled with complaints of their accounts being banned. Reports are coming out that there are users getting bans of as long as 20 years.
The ban works well with Valve's requirement that all accounts be tied to a phone number. So if a person who has been banned attempts to rejoin through a smurf account, it actually won't work. The system makes sure to blacklist the phone numbers associated with the account. Chances are if they do this, their ban could be longer.
According to Valve, the company is going to refine the detection algorithms even further, especially for abusive behaviors. Not only that, Valve also intends to start issuing weekly bans without the need to hand out advance notices to violating accounts. As mentioned, the accounts that are banned are also going to have their associated phone number blacklisted.
Bad behavior is always going to be present in multiplayer games. However, rules like these can go a long way in making sure that players remain loyal to the game and don't ruin the experience for everyone else.
