CSGO July 8 patch ships Trusted Mode live in major cheater crackdown

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has implemented a new anti-cheat named Trusted Mode in a major crackdown on cheaters. However, the new system seems to be having unintended consequences.

Since CS:GO’s move to free-to-play at the end of 2018, players have noted a sharp increase in cheaters. With the game no longer locked behind a paywall, it’s easy to create a new account and just continue cheating.

VAC banwaves are issued few and far between to stop cheat developers from figuring out their secrets. On top of that, the current Prime matchmaking system has proven to be a band-aid solution, and not a proper fix.

Valve are looking to turn that around though. After a couple of weeks of beta testing, CS:GO will have a secondary anti-cheat enabled at launch. Called Trusted Mode, the system will detect third-party software running in the background, and block it.

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“By default, players will launch CS:GO in Trusted Mode, which will block third-party files from interacting with the game,” the developers said in a July 8 blogpost.

If a player launches CS:GO with “incompatible files,” they will be notified as such. It will also give them an option of launching in “Untrusted Mode.” This will reduce their trust factor, and players won’t be able to join VAC-secured servers.

If the system detects third-party software mid-game, it will boot players out until the files are closed. The system, in theory, should block cheats from launching in CS:GO.

However, Trusted Mode has already had its flaws exposed. Some cheat developers have reportedly gotten around the third-party blocking measures in under an hour.

Not only that, but false positives have also been recorded with streaming software, which has forced CS:GO broadcasters offline. This is on top of numerous other third-party software like GeForce Shadowplay, a popular screen capture service, reportedly not working after the new update.

Trusted Mode was the only addition to CS:GO in the July 8 patch. No balance changes or bug fixes were made to the game. However, given it’s been upwards of a month since the last big patch, more changes shouldn’t be far away.