Valve, a game developer, has banned over 40,000 accounts from Dota 2, a multiplayer online battle arena game, for using cheating software. The software gave players an unfair advantage by providing them with access to internal client app information that is not visible during normal gameplay. This internal information allowed these players to obtain a competitive advantage.
The game has a professional competition scene with various tournaments and leagues for players of all levels. Success in Dota 2 is heavily reliant on strategic thinking, teamwork, and quick reflexes. Players who seek an unfair advantage over their opponents can turn to the entire industry of third-party cheats that accommodates this demand.
To ensure that everyone can enjoy a fair playing environment, Valve has to identify and stop the use of these cheats as soon as possible. Valve developed a patch that acted as a honeypot to catch requests on areas that shouldn’t be queried or monitored by the gaming app. The honeypot created a section of data that would never be read during normal gameplay, but the exploits could read this data.
All of the accounts banned today read from this secret area in the client, which gave Valve extremely high confidence that every ban was well-deserved. After the Dota 2 gaming community applied the patch, which is a mandatory requirement to join multiplayer games, over 40,000 accounts using the cheating software were revealed.
Valve says it decided to publicize this crackdown case to send a clear message to all players, including professionals who participate in official Valve events, that using software to read data from the client during playtime will result in permanent account bans. This crackdown case is one of many that Valve carries out in its effort to fight cheaters.
Cheating in online gaming remains an ongoing problem that developers must continue to address. Despite this, the latest efforts made by Valve have set an example for others in the gaming industry to follow in their fight against cheaters.
