Valve’s Deadlock Anti-Cheat System Allows Players to Transform Cheaters into Frogs

Valve has introduced an innovative approach to tackling cheaters in its upcoming third-person MOBA, Deadlock. With the latest update deployed to the game, players can now decide the fate of detected cheaters when Valve’s anti-cheat system catches them during a match. The options include banning the player immediately or transforming them into a frog.

As Deadlock is still under development and barely announced, this marks the first significant implementation of anti-cheat measures. After being turned into an amphibian, the system will subsequently ban the player, so this provides a humorous method of addressing cheating before the banhammer comes down.

Here’s how the system functions in Valve’s own words:

Added an initial Anti-Cheat detection system. 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 frog transformation can be viewed in full in the embedded video below.

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

While entertaining for many, this frog system is unlikely to be part of the final release of Deadlock. Valve has stated that this is an “initial Anti-Cheat detection system”and that it is currently developing a more comprehensive second version.

“We will activate the user banning feature in a couple of days following this update,”the company explained in the changelog. For those concerned that the frog implementation could affect their in-game rankings, Valve clarified that “when a match is concluded this way, the results will not count for other players.”

In addition to the frog transformation, the update has introduced Mirage, a new playable hero capable of controlling winds, launching fire scarabs, and leeching life from foes. His ultimate ability allows him to teleport to any ally or visible enemy on the minimap for surprise ambushes. To read the complete changelog of this major update to Deadlock, click here.

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