Deadlock’s new anti-cheat turns cheaters into frogs

Deadlock, Valve’s newest MOBA-shooter hybrid, is still in its embryonic stage but already getting pestered by cheaters. They seem to be drawn to Valve’s games like moths to a flame, but Valve was pretty quick in its response this time around and came up with a hilarious countermeasure.

Deadlock’s new anti-cheat update has players voting to decide the fate of people it catches cheating. You now have the power to choose whether cheaters will get immediately banned, or turned into frogs for the remainder of the match, then banned. In either case, a game affected by a cheater will not count towards your MMR.

That’s the image posted on Valve’s forums to accompany the patch notes, but it’s actually what you’ll see if the anti-cheat system catches a cheater in your game.

And this is what you’ll see if the players decide to go the humiliation route:

The Twitter user above is obviously joking, but your average cheater’s lack of knowledge of the game they’re ruining might very well prompt them to similar responses.

And this is one hell of a lot of fun, so here’s hoping cheaters won’t find a way to game the system and have non-cheaters banned. Yes, similar things have happened in Dark Souls, where hackers found ways to kill and have innocents banned in their place.

Interestingly, this countermeasure was not inspired by the frog curse from FFVII., but by “FU Surprise Mode”, an old Counter-Strike anti-cheat magic that never saw the light of day.

You can now play judge, jury, and executioner on Deadlock via Steam.