One of the requirements for players to play VALORANT’s new Premier mode has now become a highly sought-after feature for all ranked players, given its potential to deter cheaters and smurfs from standard competitive play.
To play Premier, players need to have a VALORANT account that is in good standing and have to have completed ranked placements at least once during that account’s lifetime. But most notably, players need to verify their accounts via SMS verification.
Related: What is VALORANT Premier? How to play, team creation & more
The goal of SMS verification is to bind an account to a single telephone number so that cheaters are unable to quickly make new accounts if they’re busted for cheating, and also to potentially deter players from being able to make multiple smurf accounts. While verification doesn’t completely eliminate these issues, it does deter those unwilling to put extra effort into cheating or smurfing.
VALORANT players really want verified accounts to be a thing for standard competitive play going forward, or for Riot to add a separate ranked queue that’s exclusively for verified players, similar to what CS:GO has. In CS:GO, players can verify their account via SMS verification to queue for Prime ranked matches.
But there’s a strong likelihood that Riot won’t go through with it. Compared to CS:GO, VALORANT leans much more heavily on content creators and many openly use smurf accounts to play with other streamers or viewers. And with Premier being such a focal point for VALORANT, Riot will likely want to keep the systems in place to keep smurfs out of Premier but is worried about deterring players from normal competitive action by putting various hoops to jump through.
