Cheating is a massive problem in any online game, and MOBAs are no different. Valve has just dropped the banhammer on 40,000 Dota 2 players.
Dota 2 is still very successful, bringing in millions of monthly players. Even though MOBAs are nowhere near as popular as they were ten years ago, Dota 2 still has a very tight-knit community. But just like any other online game, this community is filled with plenty of cheaters trying to exploit the game. Valve has stated that most of these cheaters use external software that can analyze data from the game. By analyzing this data, they can get info about their current game that they shouldn’t have access too.
Even though Valve’s goal is to fix the particular issues that allow this type of cheating, banning cheaters is still a solution. So they basically prepared a trap for all the people using third-party software to analyze in-game data. Parts of the game’s data that only cheaters could see gave them away, and Valve banned more than 40,000 accounts.
Valve has also stated that any professional players caught in this trap will be banned from competitive events. This doesn’t mean that Dota 2 is now free of cheaters. The problem with free-to-play games related to cheaters is that you can make a new account once you get banned. And just like any piece of software, people will always find a way of exploiting particular vulnerabilities. While the issue with cheaters will never be fully solved, it’s good to see that developers are trying their hardest to keep their games as fair as possible.
