Valve lures thousands of Dota cheaters into bans with fake Christmas presents as it declares 'this year is gonna be a bloodbath'

pcgamer.com:

It's ten days to Christmas, and you know what that means: It's time for the world's most famous jolly, bearded man to draw up naughty and nice lists, handing out rewards to the latter and pitiless justice to the former. That's right, Gabe Newell is sticking it to Dota 2 cheats once again.

Well, Valve is, anyway. Newell is probably busy hanging out on his yacht. This year, the studio has come up with a crafty way to lure Dota criminals into their well-earned bans. It's given out Christmas (or Frostivus, in Dota terms) presents to people on its naughty list that spit out a «Highly Toxic Lump of Coal,» when opened. The description on that lump of coal reads «Your Dota account has been permanently banned for Smurfing, or other violations of the Steam Terms of Service.» Here's a clip of a player receiving one in real-time: 

You've gotta admit, it's very funny. The Christmas-themed ban scheme came accompanied by a post on the Dota blog yesterday, in which Valve threw down the gauntlet to ne'er-do-wells of all kinds. «If you're on the Naughty List, we've got great news for everybody else and bad news for you, because this year is gonna be a bloodbath,» read the update from Valve, calling out smurf accounts and behaviour score farmers specifically, before promising that «regardless of how you've been naughty, we've been watching you… and we're cracking down on all of it.» According to Valve, «tens of thousands» of smurf accounts were banned yesterday alone.

If you're not up on your Dota lingo, smurfing is a phenomenon whereby seasoned players start new accounts for the purpose of being matched with newbies they can easily stomp, which sucks for the newbies and is kind of pathetic behaviour on the part of the pros. Behaviour