Valve has stated that those who “associate” with Counter-Strike 2 cheaters will be subjected to penalties too.
“When one or more party members get convicted of cheating and permanently banned, all their associates will be penalised with loss of Profile Rank and CS Rating,” Valve said in the Counter-Strike 2 release notes published on Wednesday (September 27) to Steam.
This was in and amongst announcements about various changes to the sequel including the Training Day tutorial for new players, correcting footstep sounds in certain locations, separation of casual and deathmatch maps into different groups, animated eyes on player models, and chickens that will finally fall off the Vertigo map.
The word “associates”, however, doesn’t offer much clarity about what that might mean. It could be a player that continually and consciously teams up with someone who’s proven to be cheating in order to gain a dishonest advantage in matches.
If a player happens to be a part of a team that’s cheating, although they were unaware of that, it’s hoped that they’re not caught in the crossfire of the developer’s sanctions.
At the time of writing Valve has not added any explanation on what “associating” with a cheater constitutes. The predecessor Counter-Strike: Global Offensive struggled with cheating for years, with one instance escalating to a full FBI investigation.
A “relatively small but significant group of players” were accused of “organised match fixing in North American [Mountain Dew League]” for a “long period of time”, the Esports Integrity Commission said in 2021.
There was also the alleged involvement of “outside betting syndicates” in these events, which was why several American authorities including the FBI were involved in its case.
In other gaming news, Epic Games has announced that a third of its game development employees have been made redundant this week, with 830 roles lost in total in a round of layoffs.