You’ll never guess how Valve went about banning tens of thousands of cheaters on Dota 2. To catch them red-handed, the firm has developed a trap in which only players using cheat could fall. We tell you how she did it.
Cheaters have always been the plague of video games and, despite the insistent efforts of publishers to get rid of them, the phenomenon has only increased over the years. Whether it’s EA with FIFA, Bungie with Destiny or even Activision with Call of Duty, everyone is redoubled in their ingenuity to try to eradicate the problem without harming the real players who have no nothing to complain about.
But none have done better than Valve so far. Last week, the giant behind Steam announced that it had achieved a good catch: 40,000 cheaters at once, just that. The game concerned is DOTA 2, one of the most popular MOBAs of all time, which regularly monopolizes the charters of the most played titles on the platform. To achieve this, Valve has developed a particularly ingenious trap.
Here’s how Valve catches cheaters in Dota 2
To do this, the company targeted a “provided access to information normally intended for internal use by the Dota customer. Those affected were exploiting this usually invisible information to gain a significant in-game advantage.”, explains the latter. The resulting idea is then as simple as it is formidable.
Indeed, Valve was “content” to deploy a Dota 2 patch containing a secret area. This area was only accessible to players using the cheat software. The others didn’t even know about it. From then on, it was enough for Valve to identify all the players who had visited the area to determine who to ban from the game. Simple and effective.
“Given the scale of this type of cheat software, today’s wave of bans is significant. However, this is only the latest action in an ongoing battle against the teams developing such software and the people using it.”writes Valve.
Source: Dota 2