Overwatch 2’s Beta is Already Infested With Cheaters

The Overwatch 2 beta was released last week and in a matter of days there are cheaters who are ruining the experience for other players. Blizzard uses its own anti-cheat and it does not rely on any of the popular anti-cheat services like Easy and BattleEye. Twitter account Anti-Cheat Police Department (ACPD) highlighted a wallhack while other Twitter users showed blatant aimbots ruining their games.

Overwatch cheats have stayed under the radar for years

ACPD is a non-profit community that helps bring down cheaters. The group’s Twitter account revealed that a well-known Overwatch 1 cheat provider that has been around since early 2018 was hit by a competitor. Emails, keys, and revenue stream details were leaked revealing that the cheat provider made over $10,682 in untaxed revenue in April 2022 alone.

The keys for Overwatch 1 cheats cost $8 for a single day, $40 for a week, and $150 for a month. Over 11,000 records (users) were found. ACPD stated on Twitter that there are other cheat providers as well who work at a large scale. With over 11,000 cheaters being detected from one provider alone, there are exponentially more cheaters who have not been caught.

ACPD compiled a list of users who purchased cheats and some known members of the Overwatch community were also identified German player Alessandro "EgZo" Succu as one of the customers of the cheat provider. EgZo released a statement claiming that he purchased the cheats for one day because “he was interested” in knowing how the cheat works. Blizzard is yet to review the situation but it could lead to a ban from competitive play.

‘Most cheats can bypass anti-cheat programs by finding flaws in the system, tricking the anti-cheat program, and making it seem like no shady third-party cheats are running in the background. The battle against cheaters is a cat and mouse game between the developers and the cheaters.

The issue can be alleviated using a kernel anti-cheat driver (vgk.sys) that runs every time a user with the game downloaded turns their computer on. Riot Vanguard and other anti-cheat solutions have done this to some extent but it also raises privacy concerns. Such anti-cheat solutions have complete access to your system data and the anti-cheat programs can be exploited to inject malicious programs or steal data.