Valve instituted a fairytale punishment for cheaters in its unreleased laney shooter Deadlock yesterday. Cheaters will now be turned into frogs, provided the other players in the match vote for it.
A Counter-Strike 2 modder proved the effect in a post on Xitter after the change was mentioned in some out-of-the-way patch notes by a Valve developer. "Added an initial Anti-Cheat detection system," said developer "Yoshi" in the changelog posted on the game's official-but-kinda-half-hidden-behind-the-bins forum. "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 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." Guys do you ever get this weird glitch in deadlock pic.twitter.com/KxFqBJBg39 Deadlock is still in heavy development, yet it was being played in the tens of thousands before it was ever officially announced.
Valve have since recognised it as extant, which is nice of them. Part of me wonders if a froggy punishment isn't a little too funny.
I suspect some cheaters will just get a memey kick out of this, then double down their workaround efforts to rejoin the game.