FACEIT bans over 13k CS2 accounts in a single day as new Anti-Smurf system goes live

Craig Robinson, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 28/07/2026

FACEIT has announced one of its biggest single-day ban waves in recent memory. FACEIT revealed it banned 13,644 accounts on July 27th, with12,478 of them, specifically targeting smurfing and multi-account abuse. It comes with the company rolling out new detection methods that now run automatically.

Smurfing in FACEIT lobbies takes a hit

Following the bans, FACEIT confirmed that over 20 million Elo has been restored to 544,098 players, directly compensating those who were affected by a banned account in their games. That means over 100,000 matches were played with smurfs in them since the detection tool started tracking and issuing punishments. That’s a lot of lobbies. It also means those boosted by smurfs, intentional or otherwise lost some elo too.

Of the remaining bans on the day, just one was related to cheating, while 181 were issued for toxicity. FACEIT has now handed out approximately 30,000 bans in the past 30 days and nearly 242,000 within 12 months.

The scale of the smurfing problem on FACEIT has long been a community complaint. There’s enough higher-ranked players deliberately tanking their accounts or making fresh accounts to stomp lower-ranked lobbies. It’s often most prevalent around those middling ranks, where smurfs find themselves after placement matches and stomp players well below their actual level. That’s even if they are nowhere near pro ranks themselves.

What’s interesting is the new tooling being used. FACEIT states the new tool runs continuously in the background. The introduction of automated detection suggests FACEIT is now equipped to catch this behaviour far more consistently than before. Should smurfs be scared? Probably.

For comparison, other esports titles like League of Legends also have smurfing problems in their more serious queues, such as Clash tournaments. Smurfs often dominated the lower tier cups, prompting Riot to implement better tracking to precent unfair games. They’ve been known to strip rewards and applying other penalties affecting competitive fairness queues.

It is good to know that companies are making better efforts to prevent queue abuse. Especially since FACEIT is a paid service for those looking for a better experience away from Valve’s own competitive matchmaking.

It’s not quite as high profile as Mudryk getting banned on CS FACEIT, but it’s still good for those still climbing.

Craig Robinson, Senior Editor

Craig began his career with Esports News UK back in 2015/2016, looking to write about a passion while studying at Manchester Metropolitan University. He stayed there for several years before moving on to other websites to begin his career after graduating. Now he's back, covering esports adjacent topics and UK stories.

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