New Deadlock anti-cheat turns hackers into frogs

We've seen videogames handle cheaters in a number of interesting ways. For instance, in recent years, Call of Duty has experimented with making cheaters blind and deaf, making them an easy target in games of Warzone. Valve is trying its hand at its own amusing form of punishment, changing cheaters in Deadlock into frogs. 

While Deadlock is still in early development and not close to release, the game has achieved wide popularity, becoming one of the most downloaded games on Steam in the past month. Due to the ease of access into Deadlock, a cheating problem has arisen over time, which Valve is now trying to deal with via in-game punishments.

Currently in Deadlock, if a cheater is detected in a match, everyone in the game will have a chance to vote – kick the cheater immediately or turn them into a frog to mess with them for a while until they inevitably quit.

Unfortunately, the term ‘detected' is very important here. Deadlock currently only has a rudimentary anti-cheat system in place, and cheat creators are constantly finding undetected exploits. With that in mind, those persistent enough will be able to avoid the croak and create unfair matches.

Deadlock is still in closed alpha testing, so it is unclear if or when the game will see a full release. Perhaps more light on that will be shed in 2025. Aside from Deadlock, Valve is also rumoured to be working on a new single-player Half-Life game and unlike Half-Life: Alyx, it won't be a VR title.

KitGuru Says: Have you been playing Deadlock recently? Have you run into any frogs in your matches? 

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