Smurf accounts in iRacing: A growing problem for the sim racing community? 

Smurf accounts in iRacing: A growing problem for the sim racing community?

Smurf accounts are playing an increasingly important role in more and more online games, whether in shooters, strategy games or sim racing. In iRacing in particular, secondary accounts are becoming more and more of a problem, which can often even have a direct impact on the playing experience of other drivers.

Smurf-Accounts

Smurf accounts are second or even multiple accounts that are used for various reasons to disguise your own playing strength. Thanks to the rating system in iRacing, which categorises drivers into different splits according to their skills measured in iRating, it can be interesting for drivers to have more than one active account. All they have to do is register another account (often recognisable by a ‘2’ in the name or a slight name change) and buy the content they want to drive.

The users of Smurf accounts

Smurfing is practised by various groups of people with different motives. These include, among others:

• Casuals: Recently, there has been an increase in the number of cases, especially at special events, in which drivers in the lower skill classes create several accounts in order to race against significantly weaker opponents and thus greatly increase their chances of winning. Another popular reason is the safety rating when taking part in races in the lower classes.
• Pros: Another group of drivers who regularly use Smurf accounts are drivers with a very high iRating. Here, multi-accounts are used for opposing motives. The main motivation is not to lose the rating of the main account, for example to be able to continue to take part in special events in the top split with the main account and at the same time drive daily races with the Smurf accounts. It is not uncommon for drivers to be very aggressive with their Smurf accounts, as a possible loss of rating is of course much less significant here.
• Streamers: Another group of people who like to work with Smurf accounts are content creators. Smurf accounts are often used here to run alternating racing series or to start questionable experiments such as a last-to-first challenge.

How many users use Smurf accounts?

Top 20 drivers

A look at the absolute iRacing elite shows just how widespread Smurfing has become. Of the current top 20 drivers in the iRacing Road rankings, the vast majority have at least one Smurf account in addition to their main account, which they use more or less regularly to take part in various races.

Daily Races

In the Daily Races, the number of Smurf accounts in the grid depends very much on the series. While in the GT3 series, for example, several Smurf accounts can be found in almost every race, especially in the top split (sometimes up to 10 accounts in one race at peak times), they are much rarer in the rookie series, but can be found quite regularly.

Special Events

The phenomenon of the extreme concentration of Smurf accounts already mentioned exists in the area of special events, which are usually held as team events. Here, the team rating is determined according to the following formula:

Team Rating = Sum of Driver Ratings / Number of Drivers

The Smurf accounts therefore affect the entire team.

• Top splits: The drivers of most of the top teams use Smurf accounts in order not to put the rating of their main account at risk and not to fall below the IRating required for the top split. This creates a downward spiral that has led to almost the entire iRacing elite using Smurf accounts.
• Bottom splits: Another phenomenon that is likely to annoy the average iRacing driver even more is smurfing accounts in the lower splits. It is not uncommon to find teams with sometimes extreme differences in the ranking, which are often due to smurfing. The drivers concerned are sometimes several seconds faster per lap than their direct competitors, which usually makes it impossible for ‘normal’ teams to win a race. The fact that iRacing allows large differences between the driving times of individual team members can significantly increase this effect.

Smurfing – The consequences

The chance of encountering a Smurf is high, but what does that mean for the remaining drivers?

• Top splits: For drivers in the top splits, the Smurf accounts make it much more difficult to maintain their rating or to position themselves at the front of the split. The direct opponents with Smurf accounts often drive much more aggressively with them than would be the case with the main account, leading to unpleasant situations.
• Bottom splits / events: Drivers or teams whose chances of winning (often their first win ever) are considerably reduced by Smurf accounts are likely to be particularly disappointed. Nothing is more annoying than being beaten by a driver who is clearly superior on paper but who is driving in a completely wrong split because of his Smurf account.
• iRating: In addition to the racing success itself, Smurf accounts also have a direct effect on the iRating of other drivers. While, for example, a driver in the top split with an iRating of 5k hardly loses any rating in a direct duel against a 10k+ driver, this can look very different against the corresponding Smurf account. What is not so important with a Smurf account becomes much more annoying in a field full of Smurfs and leads to great frustration.

Below is an example of the effects (extreme example) of a split with a large number of Smurf accounts with 6k iRating each instead of 9k iRating of the regular main accounts.

In this example, the driver achieves 8th place in each case, whereby he typically has no chance against the 9k drivers. However, if they drive with their Smurf accounts, the resulting iRating change for the driver in 8th place is significantly more negative (-35 iRating instead of -1).

Smurfing – Allowed or not allowed?

The disadvantages and problems of smurfing are obvious and one question arises immediately: Are multiple accounts allowed or not? Point 5.1.1.1 of the iRacing Sporting Code states that drivers may create multiple accounts as long as they only register for events with one of their accounts. At the same time, point 5.1.1.4 makes it clear that Smurf accounts may not be used for unsportsmanlike behaviour or to cause chaos during races. Of course, it is debatable whether the deliberate use of accounts with a low iRating in special events is per se unsportsmanlike and at what point, for example, a last-to-first challenge violates the Sporting Code. Even though, according to various reports (Reddit: Smurfing will get you DQ’d), individual drivers have already been disqualified retrospectively, iRacing has not yet taken widespread action against smurfing.

Possible solutions

There are many different approaches to curbing or even eliminating the problem of smurfing:

Smurf-Ban

The most obvious solution would of course be a general ban on Smurf accounts by iRacing. However, the fact that multi-accounts can currently be created legally and a subsequent ban would most likely be associated with a reimbursement of costs for the content of the accounts concerned speaks against this. From a monetary point of view, such an action by iRacing is therefore more than unlikely.

iRating-Burn

Another suggestion comes from Sven-Ole Haase, e-sportsman and co-founder of Grid&Go, who sees smurfing as a problem and, points to the often altered behaviour of smurf accounts.

His proposal is as follows:

• Active users with more than 3 races per week must drive at least 25% of them with their main account
• Failure to comply with this rule will result in 500 points being deducted from the account with the highest iRating.

BOP

Another suggestion is the introduction of a weight BOP, which would primarily be aimed at smurf accounts with extreme rating differences. Each Smurf account would receive an additional weight (the values in the table are examples) depending on the percentage difference between the accounts:

Safety Rating

Another, albeit probably not very effective, method against smurfing would be to summarise the safety ratings of the linked accounts. This would at least mean that drivers with an extremely aggressive driving style would drive a little more carefully on their smurf accounts

How does the community react?

The reactions within the iRacing community are divided. While many (including probably most players without a Smurf account) are against multi-accounts, other players see no problem. Below you will find the result of a non-representative survey in the official iRacing forum from 2024 with almost 300 participants.