Counter-Strike 2's limited beta test kicked off just a couple of days ago, and players are already encountering hackers in the game, despite Valve's strict invite restrictions.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fans had almost lost hope about receiving a source 2 update. But, after a short flurry of rumors earlier this month, Valve released the new update when fans were least expecting it. The source 2 engine update not only brings visual enhancements to the game but also makes some significant changes to the game's meta by revamping the smoke grenade and introducing tickless servers.

Prior to the game's full release this summer, Valve opened a beta for a limited number of players to get their feedback. However, it seems like Valve's precautions weren't enough to stop hackers from already gaining access to the servers.

Playing against first cheater @CounterStrike

— JASONR (@JasonRuchelski) March 24, 2023

Former CS: GO pro jasonR posted a tweet earlier today highlighting that he encountered the first cheater in Counter-Strike 2. But that's not all, a popular cheat company also posted a video showcasing its new wall and aim hacks for Counter-Strike 2. If you have gone through the Global Offensive subreddit lately, you might see tons of insanely skilled players unhappy about not getting into the beta.

Valve has stated that the invite is based on numerous factors "including (but not limited to) recent playtime on Valve official servers, trust factor, and Steam account standing." Ideally, one would expect that cheaters and toxic players would be completely out of the beta considering that their trust factor would be significantly lower, but that seems to be far from the case.

Looks like some sort of new anti-cheat measure is in the works for Counter-Strike 2 called "VAC Live".

If a cheater gets detected during a match, the match will be cancelled! pic.twitter.com/PQY88sBlMl

— Aquarius (@aquaismissing) March 23, 2023

That being said, Valve is not totally ignoring the cheating issue and likely has something in the works to improve its anti-cheat system. According to data miner Aquarius, Valve is planning to release an anti-cheat system that will cancel a match if a cheater is found in the game. This is named "VAC Live", and is quite similar to the system we see in Valorant. While this might ensure that players don't have to deal with unfair matchups when cheaters are kicked out of the game, it remains to be seen whether there are more significant changes to the anti-cheat.

While fans have been demanding kernel-level anti-cheat measures, it remains unlikely considering the fact that Counter-Strike is also available on Linux, which doesn't support such software. While most of the fans' demands seem to be answered with Counter-Strike 2, it remains to be seen how Valve will deal with Counter-Strike's biggest problem for over a decade.

Posted: Mar 27, 2023 9:08 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/counter-strike-2-hackers-emerge-valve-new-anti-cheat/