Even though Valve’s Deadlock hasn’t officially launched, cheaters are already causing problems.
Right now, the game is in closed beta, so you need an invite from another player to join. But that hasn’t stopped it from getting really popular. More players always seem to bring more cheaters in online games.
Valve has come up with a funny way to deal with these cheaters: turning them into frogs.
“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,” said Yoshi, one of the developers, in a forum post about a recent update. “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.”
The frogs can’t hurt anyone or use any special powers they had before. Regular players can either kill the frog or let it hop around harmlessly.
Deadlock was first announced in late August when Valve shared a trailer and allowed streamers to talk about it. They haven’t given an official release date yet, but one thing is clear: No princess will be kissing any of these cheaters-turned-frogs.
