Cheaters are the bane of every gamer’s life, but Valve, the creators of Deadlock have come up with a novel solution to cheaters in their upcoming game by giving players the option to turn detected players into frogs.
The new option went live on Sep. 27, but was first announced on Sep. 26 in the latest patch notes. As per the patch notes:
“Added an initial Anti-Cheat detection system. 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 we work on a v2 anti-cheat system that is more extensive. We will turn on the banning of users in a couple of days after the update is out. When a match is ended this way, the results will not count for other players.”
Image Credit: Valve
The update, which added new hero, Mirage, as well as a host of bug fixes and changes, has already been lauded as one of the most unique ways to tackle cheaters we’ve seen. While banning cheaters is obviously the goal, I’m sure more players would love to get some revenge on the players who are ruining games before they’re banned.
Notifications that a player you’ve reported has been banned and tribunal systems are nice, but let’s face it: Gamers are a little bit sadistic, and the option to make a game hell for someone who’s been cheating over just banning them (knowing they’ll probably just make a new account) is definitely appealing. After all, after a few games of Deadlock as a frog any cheater will be hopping mad! (Sorry, bad joke).
This method is so inventive, we’re wondering if Valve could do something similar with its other games. How about turning aimbotters in CS2 into chickens? Or turning Dota 2 cheats into creeps (although knowing our luck, they’d still find a way to win).
The frog/cheater transformation patch has claimed its first victims as of this morning, and we hope to see many more forced into the hacker-to-amphibian pipeline as the days progress.
