Let us tale you a tale of the cheater and the frog, a story coming straight out of Deadlock’s new Anti-Cheat system.
Even though Deadlock is still technically in a Playtest phase, the updates keep on rolling. Valve just added a new hero named Mirage, and a lengthy set of patch notes on September 26, 2024 include information about a new Anti-Cheat system in Deadlock.
This is something we've never seen before. The system detects a cheater and gives players in the game the option of banning them immediately to end the match. Or turning the cheater into a useless frog for the remainder of the game then banning them after.
Unfortunately, there's no option to kiss the frog to turn it back the player back into their hero.
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New Deadlock Anti-Cheat detection turns cheaters into frogs before banning them
This sounds absolutely ridiculous, but the new Anti-Cheat system added to Deadlock turns players into frogs. It is in the patch notes. Seriously. Valve put it in the patch notes and shared the following meme as part of the notes.
Here's what this section of the patch says:
"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."
There you have it. The match doesn't count, so you probably won't see too many frogs unless the players have nothing better to do. Spending a half hour or more in a match that won't reflect on your Deadlock career might not be worth the hilarity.
And also note that another Anti-Cheat system is coming to Deadlock. The wording makes it seem like this is just a placeholder until they get something more intense situated. Hopefully they decide to keep the frog aspect, or do something even more absurd.
Stay tuned to esports.gg for more esports news and Deadlock coverage.
