Yesterday, Valve implemented a legendary penalty for cheaters in the unreleased corridor shooter game Deadlock. Cheaters will now turn into frogs, provided that other players in the match also vote. A Counter-Strike 2 modder demonstrated this effect in a post on Xitter after the change was mentioned in some unusual patch notes from a Valve developer.
“Anti-Cheat detection system was added at launch,” said developer “Yoshi” in the changelog posted on the game’s official but semi-secret forum. “When a user is detected cheating, opponents during the gaming session will be presented with a choice between banning the user immediately and ending the match, or turning the cheater into a frog for the remainder of the game and banning them later.
“As we are working on a more comprehensive v2 anti-cheat system, the system has been set to conservative detection levels. We will enable banning of users a few days after the update is released.”
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Although Deadlock was still in heavy development, it was being played by tens of thousands of people before it was officially announced. Valve has since acknowledged that this is available, which is nice of them.
Part of me wonders if frog-like punishment isn't enough more fun. I think some cheaters will get some fun out of this and then redouble their workaround efforts to rejoin the game. But there is hope that some will be disturbed when this brief moment of novelty is over. Valve is also likely pushing to show that they can deal with cheaters, especially after years of complaints about widespread cheating in Team Fortress 2 have begun to be addressed.
Besides the initial barrage of anti-cheat, there are plenty of other tweaks in this update; As you'd expect from a game that's still being slapped together even as thousands of people are violently tearing each other apart in its streets. For example, there are some changes to the map layout. And most of the playable heroes change. Bebop's hook range reduced from 30m to 25m. Dynamo's “Singularity” radius reduced from 8 meters to 7 meters. Look, I'll be honest, I haven't played the game. I don't know what these words mean. But they probably matter to the absolute Dynamo geek out there.
You can also play Deadlock yourself. But only if you're invited to playtest by someone who already has access. Don't worry about me, I know a man who knows a man who knows a man. I will handle myself.