Deadlock Anti-Cheat Update: Cheaters Transformed into Frogs

Exciting Anti-Cheat News in Gaming

Valve has a creative and extremely amusing solution to punish players who are suspected of cheating in Deadlock, the company’s MOBA-style third-person shooter that is currently playable but in early development. As of Thursday, cheaters will be turned into helpless frogs, and whether they turn into frogs or not is decided by the opposing team.

How the New Anti-Cheat Mechanism Works

According to an update posted to the official Deadlock forums, the game’s new (and still incomplete) anti-cheat detection system will work like so:

• When a user is detected as cheating, during the game session, the opponents will be given a choice between banning the user immediately and ending the match or turning the cheater into a frog for the rest of the game and then banning them afterwards.

The system is set to conservative detection levels as Valve works on a v2 anti-cheat system that is more extensive. The banning of users will be activated in a few days after the update is out. Notably, when a match is ended this way, the results will not count for other players.

Previous Creative Anti-Cheat Measures by Valve

Valve is certainly not new at this anti-cheat thing and has crafted similarly creative solutions to combat cheaters in the past. The developer has previously lured cheaters into exposing themselves in games like Dota 2, issuing tens of thousands of account bans. Sometimes those bans even come gift-wrapped, to humiliate cheaters and delight honest players.

Other developers have pursued similarly creative ways to punish and shame cheaters. Call of Duty’s anti-cheat measures have caused cheaters to see hallucinations and disabled their parachutes in games of Warzone, sending them plummeting to their deaths. Fall Guys developer Mediatonic segregated cheaters to their own island.

Valve’s anti-cheat initiative in Deadlock is part of a long history of such measures at the company. According to former developer Burton Johnsey, Valve previously developed a similar system for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that would turn cheaters into chickens.