Dota 2 patch clamps down on cheaters as console commands take a hit
While February 28’s Dota 2 patch is relatively small, it takes aim at cheats and console commands, no doubt a result of Valve’s recent ban wave that wiped out over 40,000 cheaters in the longstanding MOBA.
The February 28 patch is hardly one of Dota 2’s biggest updates, but it looks like it’s a direct result of a recent ban wave that axed over 40,000 cheating accounts.
In their warning post condemning cheating, Valve notes that rule breakers could access “a section of data inside the game client that would never be read during normal gameplay.” At their core, console commands allow you to mess around with the backend of the game itself, so Valve has removed commands that “could be used to introspect client state,” introducing a second layer of security, as it were.
The ‘record’ tool has also been disabled in matchmaking games as it created a “a local demo that would contain information that wasn’t intended to be visible to the client during a game.”
Finally, player profiles can no longer be accessed during the pre-game phase, and will only be visible once everyone has chosen their hero. This is likely an attempt to combat third-party tools that analyse player match history data in order to provide cheaters with the information necessary to combat them.
Below are the full patch notes for the February 28 update, courtesy of Valve:
Disabled some functionality used by third-party tools:
While some Dota 2 console commands have bit the dust, there are still a whole collection for you to dig through if you fancy changing the multiplayer game up a bit.
Read more on pcgamesn.com
