Valve has updated its new multiplayer game Deadlock to let players turn cheaters into a frog.
Deadlock is a hero shooter that’s like a mash-up of all Valve’s previous games, including Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike. It’s in early development, with Valve updating all the time, which leads us to this week’s changes.
This week’s Deadlock patch added a novel anti-cheat measure: turning a cheater into an in-game frog. If you spot a cheater in-game, you can either ban them then and there or transform them into a frog for the rest of the match.
Here’s the note in the patch notes:
- 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 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.
And here’s how it looks:
Guys do you ever get this weird glitch in deadlock pic.twitter.com/KxFqBJBg39
— Poggu (@poggu__) September 26, 2024
According to ex-Counter-Strike developer Burton Johnsey, Valve built a system just like this for its legendary multiplayer shooter, codenamed 'FU Surprise Mode,' but it turned cheaters into a chicken. Unfortunately it was never released.
Holy crap, they finally built codename “FU Surprise Mode”?!
— BurtonJ (@sptonjohn) September 27, 2024
When I worked on VAC, Rich and I designed this for CS but the cheater was a chicken. https://t.co/Q6BKGTCZwj
Deadlock isn’t properly released yet (it’s still invite only) but it’s already a big hit on Steam, where it’s usually in the top 10 most-played games. At the time of this article’s publication, Deadlock had an impressive 118,697 concurrent players on Valve’s platform.
This week’s patch introduced a new Deadlock hero called Mirage, and made several map, hero, and item changes. Valve has yet to announce a release date.
Image credit: @poggu__
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
