Security News > 2023 > February > Valve “honeypot” used to ban 40,000 Dota 2 players using cheat
Game developer Valve has announced that it permanently banned more than 40,000 accounts for using cheating software to gain an unfair advantage over other players in the Dota 2 game.
The cheat gave players access to internal client app information that is not visible during normal gameplay, thus obtaining a competitive advantage.
Dota 2 is a popular multiplayer online battle arena game.
After the Dota 2 gaming community applied the patch, which is a mandatory requirement to join multiplayer games, it was revealed that over 40,000 accounts were using the cheating software.
Valve says it decided to publicize this crackdown case, which is just one of the many they carry out in its effort to fight cheaters, to pass a clear message to all players, including professionals who take part in official Valve events, that using software to read data from the client during playtime will result in permanent account bans.
At the start of this month, security researchers discovered malicious Dota 2 game modes on Steam, which exploited a flaw in the game to infect players with malware.