More than 40,000 Dota 2 accounts have been permanently banned in recent weeks after being caught red-handed using third-party software to cheat the game. In a blog post Published on Tuesday, Valve revealed it had recently patched a known issue used by third-party software to cheat Dota while simultaneously setting up a honeypot trap to catch players using the exploit.
According to Valve, the cheating software gave its users an unfair advantage by accessing information internally shared by the Dota client which should not be visible during gameplay. After investigating how it works, the developer decided to identify and remove the “bad actors” from the active ones Dota player base.
“We released a patch as soon as we understood what method these cheats used,” Valve said. “This patch created a honeypot: a portion of data in the game client that would never be read during normal gameplay, but could be read by these exploits.” Valve claims that all 40,000 of the now banned accounts had access to this hidden section of data and that it was “extremely confident that any ban was well deserved”.
Valve claims this massive wave of bans is just the beginning
Valve emphasized that the number of banned accounts was especially significant due to the prevalence of this particular family of cheating customers, and that the action taken is just one step in an ongoing campaign to crack down on those abusing the popular MOBA game. “While the fight against cheaters and cheat developers often takes place in the shadows, we wanted to expose this example and use it to make our position clear: if you run an application that reads data from the Dota client while you are playing games, your account may be permanently banned from playing DotaValve warned.
Valve is far from the only gaming giant trying to crack down on cheaters within its player base. Ubisoft announced this week that it has developed a system to “mess around” with players cheating using XIM devices, increasing latency to disrupt the player’s goal. Lot 2 developer Bungie also won over $4 million in a lawsuit earlier this week after courts found that cheat maker AimJunkies had violated the developer’s copyright. Meanwhile, Riot Games has issued a warning League of Legends And Teamfight Tactics players earlier this year that new cheats could be developed after the source code for both games and the outdated anti-cheating software they use were stolen in a data breach.
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