If software doesn’t catch the cheaters, then the community has to do it. This happened to a player of Dota 2 on Steam when he wanted to show off.
How did the player want to show off? In the Dota 2 subreddit, a Reddit post appeared, where the user Slark87 wanted to show how good his item build on the hero Slark is. He shows an overview of his last 20 games, of which he managed to win 18. In total, he played over 17,000 matches solo with Slark.
Another player found the build interesting and looked at some of Slark87’s past matches. He noticed that the user seemingly cheats.
How was he exposed? The hero Slark has the ultimate “Shadow Dance”. A passive part of this ability is that Slark receives a movement and regeneration bonus if he is not seen by enemy units. With this ability, the hero can detect enemy wards since they grant the enemy sight on Slark.
The wards, which bring visibility to the map, are normally invisible and can only be revealed by certain items. As Slark, you only get the information that a ward is somewhere within range with the ultimate, but not at which exact point.
The curious Reddit user Whirlm showed in just one match several situations that are supposed to prove that the player knew exactly where the wards would be. Whirlm himself says he knows how Slark’s ultimate functions, and in these situations, it is obvious that he is not playing honestly.
Slark87 became a meme among Dota players
What happened after the cheater was exposed? After Whirlm showed the community how the player cheats, the Dota subreddit was flooded with posts about the incident. Besides many memes mocking the potential cheater, one player even created a competitive game mode where the community can compete to see who destroys all the wards the fastest (via Reddit).
Even the more than 17,000 matches with the hero Slark were mocked, and since the incident, seeing the otherwise invisible wards has been portrayed as an ability that is unlocked after this number of games.
The Reddit meme surrounding Slark87 has now also made its way into standard Dota matches. A Reddit user reports that he was confused for the cheater after winning a match as Slark.
Was the player banned? According to Slark87 himself, he has already been banned. He set his profiles to private since his “exposure”. Whether he really received a ban is unclear.
With the last big update of Dota 2, Valve shocked the players of the MOBA on Steam. Without greeting, Valve directly addresses the topic and removes one of the biggest mechanics of the last few years with the first sentence. The facets that gave almost every hero a slight change in playstyle were taken out of the game: Valve brings big update for their MOBA on Steam, shocking players with the first sentence
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