Friday, September 27th 2024
Valve Addresses Rampant Cheaters in Deadlock With Unorthodox 'Frog Anti-Cheat' in Latest Update
Valve's latest third-person MOBA-like hero shooter, Deadlock, has had a pretty serious cheater problem, despite still being an invite-only public test. While the game has thus far operated on a player reporting system to identify and punish cheaters, a recent game patch has introduced a rather comical—and seemingly effective—anti-cheat system that can either ban cheating players or turn them into frogs until the end of the match.
Valve says that the new anti-cheat system is set up to be fairly conservative at the moment to avoid any false positives. Aside from the new anti-cheat, Deadlock's September 26 update introduced a new hero, Mirage, whose design and gameplay seem rooted in the jinn from Arabic myths (aka djinn or genie) and added a pretty vast collection of gameplay updates, balances, and quality-of-life improvements throughout the game.
According to the update notes, if the new anti-cheat system detects a cheater, it prompts the rest of the players in the game to vote: Either they can kick and ban the offending player effective immediately, ending the match in the process, or they can turn the cheater into a frog until the end of the match and then ban them. It's clear that Valve is having a bit of fun with the reputation that Deadlock has recently earned because of its cheaters, although it says it is working on "a v2 anti-cheat system that is more extensive." It's not entirely clear which anti-cheat system Valve is using for Deadlock, however, it was previously thought to be implementing VAC, as is present in Counter-Strike 2.
You can read the full patch notes here, but it's safe to say that the game is changing rapidly as Valve gathers feedback from its player base, which has reportedly reached well over 100,000 players as of the time of writing. The biggest changes seem to be in the name of fair and fun gameplay, with fixes including:
Sources:
Valve (via XenForo), Deadlock Intel, SteamDB
Valve says that the new anti-cheat system is set up to be fairly conservative at the moment to avoid any false positives. Aside from the new anti-cheat, Deadlock's September 26 update introduced a new hero, Mirage, whose design and gameplay seem rooted in the jinn from Arabic myths (aka djinn or genie) and added a pretty vast collection of gameplay updates, balances, and quality-of-life improvements throughout the game.
You can read the full patch notes here, but it's safe to say that the game is changing rapidly as Valve gathers feedback from its player base, which has reportedly reached well over 100,000 players as of the time of writing. The biggest changes seem to be in the name of fair and fun gameplay, with fixes including:
- Aggressive crouch spamming within a very narrow window will now cause you to very briefly move progressively slower.
- Some latency-related calculation improvements that help orbs be a little less deny favored.
- Side lanes are now a little further apart from the middle lanes.
- Added a Soul Generator (like the one in hero sandbox) in the respawn area. Starts spawning orbs at 3 minutes. Each orb is worth 10 souls when shot. (primary purpose for this is cases when you are very close to an item purchase)
23 Comments on Valve Addresses Rampant Cheaters in Deadlock With Unorthodox 'Frog Anti-Cheat' in Latest Update
Was like Chicken.
I approve of Valve's tactics here. Despite the fact that I have zero interest in online games and I frequently deploy Cheat Engine in my single player games.
It's obvious most people would prefer to avoid going through connecting, loading, and starting a new game if they can just kick offender and continue playing. Adding humiliation of cheaters the mix? Jimmy Carter had better odds...Are you by any chance from the francophone parts of Canada?
I hope this crappy game will end up as Concord. :D
We have enough Overwatch clones over 10 years. :D
I know it's internet but some countries shouldn't be allowed to play vs the rest of the worldDid you play both ? What's wrong with this one ?
If you don't use the number one build for your character, drink five coffees, and jiggle-dance from afar... you get movement-locked, skill-locked, dead in two seconds and abused by your team for doing nothing.
Should have been a Savage: Resurrections clone.
Then my next experience was in playing chess, backgammon and checkers online on Yahoo Games back in the late 1990s. Incredibly there were many using programs to cheat on those games to raise their stats. How pathetic is that?
Cheaters don't care how pathetic they are or how they ruin the fun for everyone. They just do it for the glory of the high stats and rankings. I don't see how it's possible to ever eliminate them entirely. From what I've read there are even gaming monitors that can track opponents in MP shooters and outline them on screen to give an advantage.
Case in point in ut2003 ut2004 one of the top American players also created a cheat engine. Largely an aimbot. I knew him personally as in face to face. He never once cheated in a competitive match and helped point out cheats. He was trusted. But that did not stop him from loading up an alt name and turning the shit on full blast on CTF face and just unleashing all hell because instagib is for scrubs and it was darkly funny. Obviously he wasn't doing it for the rankings as it wasn't in competitive events and wasn't using his tag. That had nothing to do with it. His motivation was that Dr.S1n created an aimbot in UT99 and then got hired by EPIC games and he wasn't gonna have any of that so he went and did his own thing. Que hilarity.
Cheating is just a part of PC gaming. Don't like it get off the PC. But the motivations are wide and variable.
Besides PC gaming is about cheating now. Look if you have a righ with a 4090 and a 480hz monitor and all that jazz you have an advantage over someone who does not. Inherently PC gaming is about being able to hurl money at it to win more. Not about playing fair. It always has been. So complaining about software cheating when you can spend your way up the charts is very silly.
Sidenote: My father has also eaten frog legs and that may be part of why I am a frog. Watch your offspring.I mean the rules change when you are playing an online game and sign a EULA saying you "will not cheat."
Don't like it? Get off that game.Dogs are legit bro.
I have a couple of hours now and the dota feeling is only here because it's a fking mess, no one communicate, you have denies and towers but that it.
If you are a few K behind it's very hard to recover/have impact or win the game (unless you are dead brain haze with +20k)