As cheating in Deadlock rears its head, Valve goes, yeah, maybe anti-cheat for its new hero shooter is a good idea

Key art for Deadlock.
(Image credit: Valve)

Valve's upcoming multiplayer shooter Deadlock is still in development, but that hasn't stopped cheaters from already appearing. Thankfully, the developers seem to be working on a solution.

Whispers about Deadlock have been in the air for some time now, with player counts suspiciously climbing behind the scenes even before Valve acknowledged that it was a game that existed. It now has a Steam page, but currently, it seems that the only surefire way to get into the playtest is to get an invite from another playtester. With that in mind, you'd think it'd limit the number of cheaters who could actually get access to the game in the first place, but last week, a clip that appeared to show players using aimbots surfaced online.

Obviously, as in any multiplayer game, this is far from ideal, but it sounds like Valve is already trying to sort it out. As the Twitter account @IntelDeadlock highlights, Deadlock dev 'Yoshi' simply writes on Discord: "Yeah, we are working on anti-cheat."

It doesn't seem that any details have been shared about what anti-cheat software might be used to deal with matters, but it's clearly going to be a game of catch-up since cheats have already breached containment. Of course, while on the one hand, it's surprising to see cheats surface so quickly, Deadlock is still far from being complete, so, understandably, there's much more for the devs to work on at this point, anti-cheat included. Hopefully, it'll be in a much better place by the time it is released in its full form at some point in the future.

We'll just have to wait and see if Deadlock could end up being one of the best shooters when its full launch is here.

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Catherine Lewis
News Writer

I'm one of GamesRadar+'s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.