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 towa??rds your MMR.

That's the i??mage 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 v??ery 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.

The post Deadlock’s new anti-cheat turns cheaters into frogs appeared first on Destructoid.

In a precedent-setting move, a judge has issued a legal permaban to one Destiny 2 cheat creator, on top of ordering them to pay a whopping $500,000 in copyright damages. ArsTechnica reported on a recent consent judgment between Bungie and teenage cheater Luca Leone, wherein both parties agreed to the aforementioned court ruling. Bungie claimed that Leone's leveraging of cheat software constitutes Destiny 2 copyright infringement via graphical overlays and injected code, and the court has provided an assessment that this does, indeed, make for "unauthorized? derivative work."

Following the court ruling, Leone is now officially and legally prohibited from "obtaining, downloading, copying, playing, streaming, or otherwise interacting with Bungie's games" ever again. Leone has also been ordered to scuttle down any and all accounts and services under his control that could be used to promote or discuss his legal infringements, and thou??gh the cheater is free to use regular social media, he is fully prohibited from posting anything related to the "use and proliferation of cheating software." A heck of a legal whammy fo??r Bungie, that's for sure.

[caption id="attachment_398673" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via Bungie[/caption]

A permaban of ages for Destiny 2 cheater

While it may seem strange that Bungie would rail so heavily against just one cheater, there's some additional context to keep in mind about Luca Leone, specifically. On top of producing and disseminating a comprehensive cheating app for Destiny 2, Leone was also a known harasser and one of the reasons why Bungie reduced communication with the community. Leone threatened and stalked the beloved Destiny community manager Dylan "dmg04" Gafner, for example, with the harassment campaign being ser??ious enough that the court also issued an order that the cheater wasn't allowed to come within 1,000 feet of Bungie's offices or any of the employees' known addresses.

The slightly funny bit is that Leone, at one point, attempted to get around Bungie's legal Destiny 2 agreements by opting out of them as a minor. Not only has the court decided that this made for unlicensed violations of Bungie's copyright, but it also means that Leone receive?d an extra $2,000 in damages for each and every one of his subsequent?? opted-out logins, of which there appears to have been at least 100.

The post Destiny 2 cheater gets legally permabanned from the?? game appeared first on Destructoid.

Is that person in the room with us right now?

Activision has implemented a "Mitigation" called "Hallucination" in Call Of Duty. "Mitigation" is the tacticool name that Team Ricochet, COD's anti-cheating department, gives to measures that identify and reduce cheating. Hallucination spawns imaginary enemies in the field of view of cheaters. ?These ??keep them busy while innocent players get to shoot each other up.

Regarding Hallucination's decoys, Ricochet says they “are undetectable by legitimate players, and they cannot impact a legitimate player’s aim, progression, end of match stats or?? overall ??gameplay experience, but serve to disorient cheaters in a variety of ways�

If you're a cheater, the decoys will act just like real ?players and also look like real players in the cheater's software of choice. The game places these decoys near suspicious players, so those who shoot at them will imm??ediately out themselves as cheaters.

Why not just ban cheaters outright?

Team Ricochet bans many cheaters every day, but that's not the most productive action to take in all situations. Cheating tech is constantly ?evol??ving, and sometimes it's best to learn about the cheats involved before taking radical action. Mitigations allow innocents to play undisturbed and keep cheaters at bay while gathering important data.

Also, and this is just my opinion, this is a valid companion to banning because it is hilarious. I just can't pretend to not love it when cheaters unwittingly turn into the equivalent of a dumb MGSV guard when they signed up to play as Snake.

Activision is no stranger to trolling cheaters. The company had previously made innocent players invisible in the eyes of cheaters, pitted suspected cheaters against each other, made the weapons of cheaters fire only blanks, and even removed weapons from the hands of cheaters �while also pr?eventing them from u?sing melee combat. Still, this Mitigation that feels straight out of Uncharted 3's Djinn-induc??ed trip might just take the cake anti-cheating cake.

The post Call of Duty trolls c?heater?s with imaginary enemies appeared first on Destructoid.

Over four million of which fall under 'cheating'

Microsoft has debuted its new Xbox Transparency Report, a bi-annual public document designed to detail all of the black-and-green brand's actions in regard to community enforcement, player complaints, banned and?? suspended accounts, and all other manner of recorded dirty dealings on the Xbox platf?orm.

"With this inaugural Xbox Transparency Report, it is our goal to share with you more about the? wide range of actions that the Xbox team takes to moderate content on our platform and create safer experiences," opens the r??eport. "As an essential part of our growth, we expect this report to evolve over time as we learn, iterate, incorporate feedback, and make improvements."

The first report, perhaps unsurprisingly, reveals that Xbox has doled out around 7.31 million community enforcement actions between ??January and Ju?ne 2022. 63% of these enforcements were account suspensions, with a huge 4.50 million accounts put into time-out. The 7.31 million enforcements is almost triple the amount delivered in the latter half of 2021, suggesting that Xbox has put its money where its mouth is in regards to ramping up its moderation.

Breaking down the offenses, over 4.33 million enforcements (57%) were for Cheating and/or Inauthentic Accounts. Profanity counted for 1.05 million enforcements, with Adult Sexual Content (814,000), Harassment or Bullying (759,000), and Hate Speech (211,00) each being hit with six figures worth of d??isciplinary action.

The huge uptick in community enforcement is being seen as a proof-positive outcome of Xbox's proactive stance on moderation. In October 2021, Microsoft partnered with software company Two Hat Studios with an eye to improving its monitoring and reaction to player complaints and reports. Clear?ly, Two Hat Studios has been worth the purchase, given the massive increase in enforcement ??just one year later.

"We believe safety is everyone’s responsibility, and we're committed to an ongoing journey of learning an?d constant improvement," concludes the report. "We know things aren’t perfect. We will continue to work closely with industry partners, associations, regulators, and community members to improve our features, settings, ??and technologies."

The Xbox Transparency Report is available to read in full right here.

The post Xbox Transparency Report details seven million enforc??ements in six months appeared first on Destructoid.

Pre-recorded footage used in bonus speedrun

The Games Done Quick (GDQ) team has announced that it has rescinded a World Record run that took place during last week's Summer Games Done Quick 2022 event. The run, which featured hack 'n' slash actioner Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance, has been nullified after the SGDQ ??runner admitted to using footage spliced toge??ther from previous offline attempts.

While most of the event's speedruns were showcased on-site, a small handful were held in an online capacity for logistical reasons. A Russian speedrunner tackled Revengeance' "Blade Wolf" DLC as part of a viewer donation bonus incentive, and proceeded to achieve a world-best clear time in the process. However, the player has since confessed to having? faked the feat by simply playing an edited, pre-recorded video on stream.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlkWSqA4VFU

"The Blade Wolf DLC run incentive people paid for is a pre-recorded, segmented run," confessed the runner to GDQ enforcement team after the event. "I haven't mentioned it anywhere, neither during the submission process or the email I sent to the committee. It was supposed to be a real-tim?e run, but I've changed my mind at the last second after switching the saves."

"I've done an actual bad thing, and I shouldn't have done this on the event... I acted selfishly and I haven't p??ut more time thinkin??g about others. I am sorry for doing the thing I've done. Truly."

The GDQ team has since removed the run from its YouTube archive and banned the player from participating in future GDQ events. Despite the honest confession, GDQ seems to believe that it was understood by the player that the subterfuge would not?? be publically outed by the GDQ te?am. This, obviously, has not been the case.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Ui0Sk1DAM

"This is absolutely unacceptable and attempts to undermine the integrity of the speedrunning community that we love and support," wrote the team in a statement to PCGamesN. "The exact result they desired was unclear from the document, but it is clear that they believed we would not be willing to speak out about their behavior. However, we believe it is in the community's best inte?rests to know why this run was removed by GDQ. We have remo?ved [the player's runs] from our YouTube archive, and will not permit him to run in the future."

Summer Games Done Quick 2022, returning to the Double Tree Hilton in Bloomington MA for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic forced the events offline, saw some of the fastest and finest players in the world gather together to smash through a huge catalog of new and classic video games. When the curtain fell on Saturday, the event had raised an incredible $3.01 million USD for charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. You can check out (almost) every run from the event on the official GDQ YouTube channel.

The next online GDQ event, Flame Fatales, will take place between August 21-27.

The post SGDQ 2022 Metal Gear Rising:?? Revengeance World Record run confirme??d fake appeared first on Destructoid.

Block and report players from inside the game

Developer DICE has already discussed ways in which Battlefield 2042 is building up the gameplay of its upcoming FPS. But today, the studio posted a blog addressing the social aspects of its game, and how it will be addressing community and conduct, including cheaters, within Battlefield 2042.

In a post about DICE's commitment to "Positive Play," the studio details how its addressing player interactions in Battlefield 2042. This ranges from some guidelines for how to treat other folks in-game, to improved?? tools for pinging peo??ple who are detracting from the experience.

First off is the Community Charter, which outlines its expectations for players in Battlefield 2042. These include some "Gold?e??n Rule" topics, and not sharing inappropriate content.

What's likely to appeal to Battlefield players are improved tools for muting, blocking, and reporting players from within the game. DICE says that reporting a player is faster than previous Battlefield games. It should be easier now to report someone and return to the fight, as well as options?? for muting some or all players, in text and voice chat.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdA6V5PIEFw

Even the Battlefield Portal, DICE's custom game feature for Battlefield 2042, will let players us?e admin tools to apply persistent bans to players across the Community Experiences they've created.

DICE also s??ays it will be investing in developing internal capabilities and technologies to augment third-party anti-cheat solutions, so there wil??l be "multiple layers of defense" against cheaters. And for consoles, mouse and keyboard support won't be enabled at launch, though they will still investigate options for the future.

It's good to have a commitment to tackling cheaters from the get-go, as well as some streamlined options for reporting or avoiding players in matches. Hopefully those tools make the launch of Battlefield 2042 on Nov. 19 smooth. The open beta, meanwhile, is set to go live next week.

The post Battlefield 2042 will have a streamlined ??reporting process appeared first on Destructoid.