Cheating in online games has been a scourge since time in memoriam, but the ways that developers deal with malicious players continue to evolve and innovate. Deadlock, the Valve hero shooter quietly taking over Steam in its closed beta, is the latest multiplayer game to move the art forward by giving innocent players the chance to turn their cheating opponents into frogs.
Despite not being out yet, or even barely announced, Deadlock’s community has already had to contend with a cadre of online cheaters among the ranks of its early beta invitees. But the MOBA-themed shooter, which is still in a wild experimentation phase, has been getting regular updates and balance changes. The latest patch is testing a novel new Anti-Cheat detection system for dishing out bans:
“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 patch notes from developer “Yoshi” read. “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.”
The anti-cheat magic has already been spotted out in the wild. Once a cheater is transformed into a frog, all the can do is hop around helplessly while the other team shoots the crap out of them. It’s very similar to when Cloud and company get turned into frogs in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Fortunately, it’s not a requirement. Anyone fed up or who just wants to move on a start a new match that will actually count can decline to humiliate would be cheaters this way. I’m not sure if there’s a voting system where all the players on a team get a say, which would also be funny. It’s a 6v6 game so who knows how the tie-breaker would get figured out.
In the meantime, Deadlock still doesn’t have a timeline for a full release or even an official open beta. I’ve been fortunate to play a little myself and it’s a lot of fun, though it definitely caters a bit to number-crunching RPG nerds. The Dota 2 influence is inescapable, from the creep waves to the upgrade progression, but it’s one of the better 3D MOBA shooters I’ve come across. We’ll see how it evolves as Valve continues testing what could be it’s next big breakout multiplayer success story.