Valve reveal new CSGO anti-cheat measures to combat hackers

Bill Cooney

Valve has rolled out a new, optional beta for CS:GO to test several changes that could be going live soon for their anti-cheat system.

Cheaters have become a meme with a life of their own in Counter-Strike; no matter how hard devs have tried to counter them in the past, there always seems to be some who manage to sneak through and make it into matches.

On June 26, Valve announced a new, optional beta for CSGO that “now significantly restricts the types of programs and files that can interact with the game.

The program, which would only operate while the game is running, will warn players if they have an incompatible program or file on their computer and that they might be banned from Valve Anti Cheat-enabled servers as a result.

There is an option where players can disable the ‘Trusted Launch’ feature in your game settings, but doing so could temporarily impact your trust score, which, in turn, can affect the quality of the matches you’re placed into.

Even if any of the third-party software you have running at the same time as CSGO is legitimate, it still might not work with the new restrictions as the developers will have to get authentication from Valve for all programs and files that interact with the game directly.

Exactly what kind of programs and files the feature will pick up on and flag is unknown, but it seems like all third-party apps and programs could be affected until their devs work with Valve to get approved.

Valve appears ready to put more pressure on CSGO players who don’t like following the rules.

The system has only been released to beta at the moment, which means it’s not required to use and is still in the testing phases, for now. But, if developers are offering players the chance to try and test it out, chances are it could see a wider release sometime soon in the future.

If you’re interested in trying and testing these new changes out for yourself, you can opt into the beta right here, but as we mentioned, if you’re using any outside apps or anything that interacts with CSGO at all, you may want to disable them, as they may not work right away with the new system just coming out.

About The Author

Bill is a former writer at Dexerto based in Iowa, who covered esports, gaming and online entertainment for more than two years. With the US team, Bill covered Overwatch, CSGO, Influencer culture, and everything in between.