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Valve’s Deadlock is turning cheaters into frogs

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A close-up of a green frog sitting on a green leaf.
Joel Henry / Unsplash

Deadlock, the MOBA shooter that’s currently only available for invited play testers, has incorporated a new way to punish cheaters, and it involves turning them into frogs.

Yes, really. In Deadlock‘s recent 09-26-2024 update, Valve introduced an anti-cheat detection system. When it notices that a player is cheating during a round, they get two choices: either ban them immediately or turn them into a frog — and then they get banned. If this occurs, that particular game won’t count for either side.

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The Deadlock Intel account on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video of what this looks like. As a frog, you can only hop slowly, making it impossible to dodge gunfire. You’re also, you know, a frog, which makes you a very visible target. It’s like a green scarlet letter for Deadlock players.

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This is what cheaters will look like if you turn them into a frog using the new anti-cheat

pic.twitter.com/ECVx7uQAud

— Deadlock Intel (@IntelDeadlock) September 26, 2024

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The anti-cheat is still in the early stages, so Valve wrote that it’s set to “conservative detection levels” right now as the development team works on a more comprehensive solution. In the meantime, you can also mute and report enemy cheaters both during a round and after using the ESC key.

Cheaters are always a huge problem in online multiplayer games, but especially with Valve’s offerings. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and now Counter-Strike 2 are rife with cheaters and hackers. Valve has its own anti-cheat called, of course, Valve Anti-Cheat, but it hasn’t been perfect. It also doesn’t help that these are free-to-play PC games where anybody can make another account after getting banned.

Burton Johnsey, who was with Valve until 2017, wrote on X that the developer had been working on a similar system for CS:GO that turned cheaters into chickens called “FU Surprise Mode.”

Holy crap, they finally built codename “FU Surprise Mode”?!

When I worked on VAC, Rich and I designed this for CS but the cheater was a chicken. https://t.co/Q6BKGTCZwj

— BurtonJ (@sptonjohn) September 27, 2024

This is a much bigger Deadlock update besides the frog anti-cheat. Valve also added a new hero, Mirage, the ability to turn on custom matches, more features for private lobbies, and various updates to the heroes and performance.

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Carli Velocci
Carli Velocci
Contributor, Games
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
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