Valve’s effort to address cheating on Dota 2 had backfired when innocent users were caught in the crossfire.
Last week, the developer released an update that was meant to weed out the spam cheaters in the game. However, the update caused unintended consequences when innocent heroes were immobilized for no reason at all. This means that their heroes are not performing their commands.
For a long time, Dota 2 has been plagued with cheaters who use hacking scripts to buff their skills. The problem is that the average user doesn’t really know about scripts, so they just assume their opponents are very good.
Now, some users have been taking advantage of the hacking scripts to crash the servers. As a result, the Matchmaking Rating is thrown out of the loop. This will have a long-term effect on the seasonal ranking of players. They will also lose bragging rights as it’s harder to scale up the Leaderboards.
Cheaters would rather crash the server so that the MMR ranking won’t be affected.
Valve has already added a reporting tool where the community can complain about possible skills abuse. Again, only a few have reported possible cheating cases that can be verified by the developer.
In fact, the community–sick and tired of scripts–have declared war on cheaters. When they tried to catch how cheaters do it, they found out how unfair the advantage they have over others.
For instance, using scripts, they can find out where exactly their opponents teleport on a blind map. They will also discover exactly where the opponents are farming. They can collect runes at amazing rates and also disable enemies at will.
Command spam scripts, however, are a whole different monster. Dota 2 community is sharing plenty of tips and tools to combat hex scripts, but they’re helpless in server crashes.
It is in this context that Valve released the Dota 2 update to prevent the server from constantly crashing.
However, this early, it’s hard to say that the Valve update is causing some of the characters to be immobilized. The update is designed to root out the scripts. One common theme for players with immobilized heroes was that they were clicking rapidly while playing. It could have activated the anti-cheating sensors of the new update.
In the same vein, the glitch could be a direct result of the Dota 2 update. Valve has yet to issue a statement on this issue.
