Cheaters have long been an issue in Counter-Strike 2 and other Valve titles, but no one expected cheating to become a problem so soon in the still-unreleased Deadlock.
Cheating is already so rife in Deadlock that the game’s developer has launched a separate Discord channel within Deadlock‘s playtester server for players to submit video footage of alleged hackers to be reviewed by Valve’s staff.
A Discord message shared in an Aug. 26 Reddit post showed Yoshi, the anonymous project leader on Deadlock, explaining that Valve has implemented an in-game reporting feature that dedicated community reviewers will look at to determine if someone is cheating. This system appears to work similarly to CS:GO‘s Overwatch, and applications are currently open for diligent community members.
Even with all the additional defense mechanisms, Deadlock might be looking at an influx of cheats from other Source 2 engine games, such as CS2, with hackers able to use the same wallhack and aimbot cheats from Counter-Strike in the steampunk streets of New York.
The MOBA employs the use of shooting mechanics (all heroes are ranged, for now) significantly, and aim plays a massive role, as does its world design that compensates for the lack of a fog of war with big buildings and obstacles that obscure vision. Aimbots and wallhacks are perfect for the game, and given how many are out there tailor-made for Source 2, it’s no wonder we’re already seeing them pop up.
This also means that development time on cheats for Deadlock has been severely cut down due to existing hacks being available from another game. Add to that the poor track record of Valve’s Anti Cheat (VAC) system, which got a massive update, and you’ve got a very dire situation brewing.
The precise impact of existing CS2 cheats on Deadlock is difficult to determine, though the speed at which hackers have appeared in the game indicates it’s not small whatsoever. Valve seems to be adamant about combating the problem as soon as possible, and hopefully, VAC 3.0 will prove to be an effective tool for cleansing the hacker problem from both CS2 and Deadlock.
