I’m very skeptical of report systems in games but it’s nice to get the occasional confirmation that a report led to a ban. I’ll save my skepticism for another post but in this case, with Counter-Strike 2 (CS2), I actually want to give a shout out to Valve for doing a great job.
When it comes to CS2 I rarely ever report people for hacking. I play CS2 for fun and I join a lot of random, non-competitive, matches and it is fairly common for people to complain in chat about someone hacking. Most of the time though you can tell the person being called a hacker is just a good player or maybe they got lucky. CS2 isn’t really a run and gun game. You can listen for footsteps and other audible cues to determine where someone might be coming from, the mini-map can be useful, and each map has normal camping and line of sight spots everyone uses. I believe there is a large portion of the causal player base that doesn’t understand all this and when they die they might call “wall hacker!”
I’ve also been called a hacker many times. Some times I have incredible games, other times it’s just me knowing the maps and paying attention. Honestly, CS2 is one of the games I can’t really turn on music while playing because I can’t hear the footsteps. If I do play music or watch something on my second monitor I to always do a quick alt+tab and pause the music when I’m the last player alive or doing something critical so I can make the plays to win then I turn the music back on after the round.
It’s because of this that I was very happy when I saw the Player Reports message when I logged into CS2 tonight. I can recall over the last few weeks that I have reported two hackers with 100% confidence they were hacking. The first incident a few weeks back was in Office where I guy was using aimbot, walls, and a map exploit to snipe people just outside of CT spawn through a wall. There was a certain spot he could shoot through and hit T’s in a hallway. Then he’d walk out of spawn and just instantly kill anyone he saw with aimbot. He wasn’t trying to hide it at all and was using a brand new Steam account for the sole purpose of hacking.
The second report was more recent on Italy and is a bit fuzzy to me. I remember reporting a guy who wasn’t as blatant as the first one but he was popping off and when he killed me it allows you to watch through his perspective the rest of the round. I watched three people come at him in quick succession, from both sides, and the way his cursor moved to get the headshot didn’t feel like a normal flick shot or quick reaction. It felt like a hack and the way he followed people through walls without seeing them really felt like he had walls on. In case you don’t play CS2 when you’re dead in casual games you can see the location of all players on both sides which is also what people with wall hacks enabled can see. I don’t accuse him just because of this one incident, he kept killing me and I was able to keep watching him and after a few rounds I felt confident enough to report him.
I’m not sure who got banned but either way I can appreciate Valve taking action. It makes me feel good as a player knowing that the company running the game does take action so the player experience doesn’t get ruined by hackers in every lobby. Of course hackers will always be apart of online gaming but as long as there are measure to check them and they don’t get out of control then it’s still enjoyable to play those games. So next time you see a hacker in a game be sure to report them, even if you think nothing will come of it because you might be surprised.