The fight against cheats at CSGO continues, as the developers hope to take some strict measures to curb the cheating behavior of their competitive shooters. CSGO update adds a new Beta branch to the game, players can choose to join this branch to help fight cheats. The Beta version will "significantly limit" the number of third-party programs and files that can interact with the game, thus reducing the possibility of cheating software running in the background.

If players use these types of restricted programs to run the game with csgo non-prime ranked accounts, after starting the game they will receive a warning stating the name of the locked file and prevent it from joining any secure VAC server. 

To resolve this issue, players can choose to disable "Confidence Launch" in game settings, but doing so may temporarily reduce player confidence, as the developer mentioned in their blog post. One problem that this update may cause is the difficulty that third-party genuine software developers will face, and CSGO developers have also solved this problem.

For developers of third-party programs that directly interact with the CS: GO executable process, there have been added requirements that will affect their software. In the future, all DLLs that interact with CS: GO will need to be signed by Authenticode. Also, if the functions of the signed DLL interfere with the game in any way, they will be blocked.

The CSGO "confidence factor" is an indicator that Valve uses to eradicate suspected cheats. No one knows exactly how Valve calculates the player's confidence factor, but the developer revealed that it is based on a combination of account life, user reports, and game time. 

For example, when an experienced player creates a new Steam account and plays with friends with lower ratings, the level of confidence may be low. The behavior of a low confidence score is similar to what some people call a "side ban", which means that low confidence accounts can only be combined with other low confidence accounts.

Players who opt out of CSGO's cheating update will have worse matchmaking

The confidence factor is also believed to be affected by CSGO's "Overwatch" program, where players ranked as Gold Nova I and above can review gameplay demos in which players have reported other users for cheating. They can then issue a verdict on whether they believe the player in question was using cheats to gain an advantage. 

Counter-Strike's confidence factor is also affected by dueling, which means users who intentionally interrupt another's combat by purposefully blocking their teammates or intentionally damaging the team will likely have lower confidence scores.

CSGO's new cheat update comes less than a month after the release of Valorant, Riot Games' first-person shooter game that features a robust and sometimes controversial anti-cheat system called Vanguard. 

Vanguard has access to the root system, which means it watches and analyzes player systems for anything that interacts with Valorant, even when the game is not running. Vanguard has seemed effective so far, banning thousands of cheats during the beta stage of the game.

Final Words

Although 2020 has been a record year for Counter-Strike, the game's player count decreased slightly with the release of Valorant. To make matters worse, many professional Counter-Strike players have left the ship to compete in the new title. Looking to the future, this update may be an important step in reducing the number of cheats currently in the game. This beta branch is likely to be added to major customers soon, and its consequences will be more prominent at that time.