New Deadlock anti-cheat turns hackers into frogs as punishment

Jeremy Gan
Deadlock frog with game logo

A new Deadlock anti-cheat lets opponents turn hackers into literal frogs as punishment mid-match to make them absolutely useless.

Ever since its reveal, Deadlock hasn’t had a proper anti-cheat this whole time despite VAC being widely used in Valve’s other games. This resulted in cheaters flooding the new hero-shooter MOBA with no way to report them.

Luckily in the September 12 update, Deadlock added a reporting system, however, it didn’t include any options for hacking, only keeping toxic players in check.

Finally, after months of early access, Deadlock is now getting its own full-fledged anti-cheat system, and players will even be given the choice to troll hackers if they are caught.

As revealed in Deadlock’s September 26 patch notes, when a hacker is detected in the middle of a match, opponents will be given two choices.

Teams can either immediately ban the cheater which will end the game, or, if you want them to suffer, you can turn them into a frog for the rest of the match.

By the way, when the devs say frog, they aren’t kidding. The cheating player will be turned into a literal tiny frog. While being the frog of shame, you can only jump around, with no way to cast abilities or deal damage.

Enemies can still attack and kill the cheater though, so don’t be surprised if they’re frog-hunting for the rest of the game.

If you’re worried about the loss you’ll incur because a cheater was punished on your team, don’t stress, devs have assured it won’t count at all.

No matter what route the enemies choose, either to ban them immediately or torture the hacker, both options will not be registered as a loss and will always ban the hacker.

As for when this will be coming out, the developers said it will go live a few days after the update. It’s all part of Valve’s “v2 anti-cheat system” which is more effective than their previous one.