‘Counter Strike’ Bug Allows Hackers to Take over a PC with a Steam Invite
I have several thousands of hours logged in CS:GO since it was released in 2012, and Valve's lack of concern with this particular exploit seems to mimic their inattentiveness to so many other aspects of the game. With the massive following that the Counter Strike franchise has and the boatloads of cash they continually bring in from digital cases/keys/skins, they most certainly have the resources to put out these types of fires immediately. Instead, they have taken a bare minimum approach to community outreach and maintaining a game that touts a 26 million player count each month [0]. The cheating situation is the most prominent example of how little focus the game earns from its developers. Compared to how other popular FPS titles (Valorant) handles anti-cheat, CS:GO is years behind. It's not uncommon to face at least one or two players a day who are using some form of cheat (some more obvious than others). Reporting the player does nothing, and when you visit their player profile on Steam and see accusatory comments about cheating going back months or years, you can be confident that your report will have little-to-no impact -- chalk it up as a loss and hope for more honest opponents next time. I've even seen exploits in the wild that can be used to prevent anyone else in the server from reporting a cheater in the game's UI; spinbots that can kill an entire team with perfect aim accuracy within a couple seconds; bunny hop scripts that allow for movements rates that far exceed what is normal when running -- basically things that some basic AI/ML should be able to detect with relative ease. Fortunately, other third-party services have built large player bases by offering their own in-house anti-cheat software and matchmaking service which is far more effective, but I digress. It's unfortunate to see something with such great potential get so little TLC from a company that is more than capable.[0] https://blog.counter-strike.net/