Is "charm abuse" or "battle pass abuse" safe to do?

Question

Valve has added so many new things in The International 2016 Battle Pass; everyone is leveling up by doing quests and challenges, but it's really hard to achieve level high levels without buying the levels with real money. But yesterday, I started seeing strange things that people are doing a cheap trick to get level up fast.

What they are doing is, creating a private lobby with friends and then searching on a particular server with a particular language (like Chinese) so the two parties will get match against each other and then trade wins, taking turns completing quests. My question is, isn't this bannable? If I try the same trick, will I get banned from playing Dota? I'm not sure which leveling methods are against the rules. Thank you!

Answer 1

This stuff has actually been working since I first started playing Dota 2.

It happened during Diretide, Frostivus, New Bloom, and the last Battle Pass. Actually, some people falsify their Matchmaking Rating in this way to get as high as 10,000 Party MMR. Valve has made a lot of ban waves since 2012. But looks like they forgot about Party MMR, as there is no leaderboard for it anyway.

It's illegal from a moral stance. But looks like Valve doesn't take much action or enforce any rules that might exist.

For example, during one of the Diretide events, the "top damage to Roshan" high score was done by teams who picked nice heroes not to win the game, but win the exclusive courier prizes later.

So, if you got time—you can go on. And actually, no one will judge you. Just because it doesn't violate any written rules. However, there is also nothing saying it is not bannable, so do it at your own risk.

P.S. In a regular match, when someone asks you to die to help you with their quest, when you're already losing—from a moral perspective—if you do, you are a good guy that helps others, but at the same time you are also a shameless feeder. Food for thought.