Cheaters cause problems with Valve’s deadlock before the official launch

Valve’s new arena shooter Deadlock has already caused a lot of excitement before its official release. According to SteamDB, the game recently reached a concurrent player count of over 170,000. But despite the hype and although the game is still in the public alpha testing phase, reports of cheaters are piling up.

A recent Reddit post shows a kill cam video from Deadlock in which a suspected cheater uses a wall hack to chase an enemy through a wall and dodge an attack. The player who recorded the video reports that this is not the first time he has encountered the same cheater. Similar experiences are widely shared on Reddit and the Deadlock forum.

According to previous posts on the r/Steam subreddit and the Deadlock forum, the penalties for cheating are harsh. Both the cheater’s account and the inviting player’s account will be banned. Although Deadlock does not currently have a built-in anti-cheat system, Valve encouraged users to report extensive activity. Deadlock is expected to utilize the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system upon full release. This could mean that players who violate the rules could also be banned in other games such as Counter-Strike 2, DOTA 2, and several Call of Duty titles.

It’s possible that the lack of an automated anti-cheat system in Deadlock is a cautionary tale during the alpha testing phase. This could provide Valve with an opportunity to observe player and cheater behavior and analyze what software and strategies are used by cheaters. In an alpha version of a game or software, there are always going to be issues that could be caught by an anti-cheat system, so manual reporting might be safer during this phase.