Cover-Credits:
Valve announced in its recent blog post that it rolled out a new cheat detection code a few weeks back and accumulated a list of cheaters since the rollout. With the new cheat detection code in action, Valve issued another ban wave, this time addressing the increased usage of third-party cheating and hacking apps.
This new ban-wave has been ruthless and several players, both casual ones and pros, have gotten banned. It should be noted that the Dota 2 community has been urging Valve to take action against the increasing number of cheaters and hackers in the game.
Valve Rolls Out Improved Cheat Detection System
Valve seems to have finally heard the cries of the Dota 2 community that was urging Valve to ban the use of third-party apps such as Overplus. The Overplus application allowed users to see details of other players before the drafting phase even began which would give the user an unfair advantage over non-user. With the help of this information, players could ban the enemy’s most successful heroes or counter-pick the heroes.
On 9th February, Valve announced in a blog post that it had rolled out a new cheat detection system a few weeks back and had automated the ban waves. The first of these automated ban waves took place shortly after the release of the blog post and has taken the community by storm.
In the blog post, Valve wrote, “In keeping with this "spirit of giving" theme, we have another gift for (almost) everyone: We've rolled out some new cheat detection code. Well, actually, we rolled it out a few weeks back, and we've spent the time since accumulating quite a set of cheaters. You'll probably notice fewer of them in your games as the automated ban waves roll out.”
Dota 2 Community Reacts to Valve’s Crackdown on Cheating, Hacking
The overall consensus in the Dota 2 community about the ban wave seems to be positive. Nigma Galaxy’s streamer Aliwi "w33" Omar who shed light on cheaters last month seems to be happy to see Valve taking action to make Dota 2’s community better. He tweeted, “A blessing from Valve! Pubs will be more bearable for a while now that Overplus is banned.”
One user took to Reddit to celebrate the ban wave. They posted screenshots of the Overplus Discord chat and were notably happy witnessing the outrage.
Dota 2 statistician Ben "Noxville" Steenhuisen even laid out a list of banned pros and former pros on the first day of the automated ban wave.
Hilariously, Yaroslav "Limitless" Parshin, who recently hit the 12K MMR milestone, was caught in this ban wave. It is although Limitless can’t escape controversies. He was previously involved in a match-fixing scandal at the Dota 2 Champions League Season 15 in 2022 along with nine other players, who were later indefinitely banned from pro play. However, he could soon be participating in pro games starting from December this year.
AFK Gaming
However, not all cheaters have been affected by this ban wave. Some players using a notorious Russian cheat explicitly claimed that their accounts are still safe.
The issue of Overplus is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s much more to be unraveled in the coming weeks as AFK Gaming dives deep into the rampant cheating and hacking problem prevalent in Dota 2.
