Owen thrives on the thrill of competition, particularly in Valve titles. He reached a peak of 8,500 MMR in Dota 2 and remains a regular contender on the Southeast Asian leaderboards. Beyond his main forte, he has extensive experience in the Counter-Strike 2 esports scene and a deep understanding of esports betting.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image Credit: Valve It’s no secret that professional Dota 2 players have been breaking MMR records like twice a year. Most recently, we had PARIVISION’s wonderkid Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov breaking the 18,000 MMR milestone, becoming the first in the world to do so.
However, nobody really celebrated this accomplishment… Not because it isn’t impressive, but because it happens all the time now. Like, Satanic reaching 18,000 MMR just doesn’t hit the same as Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi reaching 9,000 MMR 10 years ago. And the main reason for that is that the MMR system has just become too inflated, like for real.
Well, the “MMR inflation” has certainly become a big enough issue for Valve to take notice, as they recently rolled out massive changes to the Immortal MMR system in the Summer Scrub update.
Many players will agree that the MMR system has gotten super inflated, and the root cause is believed to be the Double Down tokens that let you win twice the MMR from a single match. Or, maybe players have just gotten better in general – that’s also very possible.
However, inflation in the Immortal bracket is pretty clear. According to Stratz’s database, the Immortal rank was only home to the top 1% of players in 2023. However, it has now ballooned to around 4.4% in 2026, meaning we have almost four times as many players in this rank as we used to.
Image Credit: Stratz I mean, I see several people on Reddit posting screenshots of reaching the Immortal bracket almost every day – the rank just doesn’t feel as exclusive as it used to be now.
Back then, once you reached the Immortal rank in Southeast Asia, you’d immediately find yourself on the leaderboards as one of the top 5,000 players in the region. In 2026, you’d have to reach around 6,900 MMR to get your leaderboard rank.
But the real problem was the scale. MMR in this bracket had crept up to the point where the top players literally had 16,000 to 18,000 MMR. The gap between them and a fresh Immortal player was over 12,000.
To put it into perspective, the distance between a Herald player and an Immortal player is 5,000.
So, the MMR system was a little scuffed. That’s why, in the most recent Dota 2 update, Valve announced new changes to the ranked system – particularly in the Immortal bracket.
The changes in the patch notes are as follows:
So, they didn’t do a full MMR reset or anything and turn matchmaking into the Wild West – they pretty much just shrunk every Immortal player’s MMR. Satanic, who was the highest-ranked player in the world at 18,000 MMR, was dropped down to 9,462 MMR. This means there are no players in the five-digit mark anymore – for now, at least.
Relative leaderboard positions are also preserved, meaning if you were ranked #2,500 in the leaderboards, you’re still #2,500 after…