John McDonald is known for being a Valve developer that regularly offers his opinions in social media forums such as Twitter.
As Valve seems to be an absolute void of communication regarding Counter-Strike along with most other titles that Valve manages to hold onto, finding developers willing to speak their own mind can result in some interesting results.
The one currently in question is one of the more interesting tidbits that we’ve seen from a Valve developer, and one that the community seems to readily disagree with.
I’d be interested to know where and what time of day you play in—because most high trust players (which is about 96% of players) experience cheaters now in about 1 in 40 matches. Feel free to send me your account name through the valve contact form!
— John McDonald (@basisspace) December 6, 2020
John McDonald states that there is roughly one cheater for every forty matches played in Counter-Strike; a brazenly low figure that is arguably the closest we can currently get to Valve outright stating how they view their anti-cheat measures (both VAC and Trust Factor) have stood during the current litany of matches being played.
Counter-Strike has consistently managed to break through the population count with some thanks being sent towards the pandemic, and others more readily showing gratitude towards Counter-Strike‘s addictingly tantalizing prospects of the next round you play being your biggest one ever.
Living life two minutes at a time isn’t without its drawbacks, however, as many have reported that there are more cheaters after the Trust Factor launch than ever before, and they’re seemingly continuing to play with absolute impunity.
Some are theorizing that John McDonald may accidentally be referring to skewed statistics, in that the VAC system only catches one player for every forty matches played, and the punishment is handed out. Others still are stating that it roughly matches their experiences within the title as of late, which immediately makes everyone rather suspicious of that individual.
A frustrating aspect to suss through all of this, however, is precisely how Counter-Strike matches are played and how quick some users are to call cheats.
This makes discerning which players are cheating an extremely difficult task, more so when a player knows how to hide his advantage: as Counter-Strike is a game of limited intelligence, knowing that other players are blatantly cheating can be difficult to discover unless their own team outs them as a cheater.
Thus, as with almost every online game, it’s fair to state that everyone calls everyone else a cheater when they managed to get domed at a decent distance with a pistol and a flick of the wrist.
For all of the differences in the community at this juncture, one thing is readily agreed upon: we all wish we had more experiences like John McDonald.
