The New Overwatch Patch May Have Quietly Rendered Aimbots Useless

[ffronw]

The New Overwatch Patch May Have Quietly Rendered Aimbots Useless

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1327/1327033.jpgIf the reports are true, Blizzard may have subtly rendered aimbots useless in Overwatch in the latest patch.

The newest Overwatch patch may have slipped a little change in under the radar. Apparently Blizzard made a change that has rendered many aimbots useless.

According to a post [https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/6imjce/todays_patch_includes_defensive_measure_against/?st=j487xogs&sh=b1b42555] in the Overwatch sub-Reddit, there's an update to the outlines of player characters in the game. The post says,

"Basically starting from this patch, the outlines on enemies slightly change in color (unnoticeable to human eyes) so that the image recognition engine on aimbots would be either completely useless or have high failure rate (if they try to target the range, rather than a specific RGB value). They are already known to function incorrectly on maps like Gibraltar with red backgrounds so this should deal a critical blow to these hacks."

In short, this means that many of the aimbots in use work by identifying the color outline of a player. With this change, that color is always shifting, making it difficult, if not impossible, for those bots to work.

If these rumors prove to be true, it's good to see Blizzard working to combat cheaters, even if they didn't mention it in the patch notes.

Permalink

 

[Cether]

It's a great change, but cheat and hack makers are in constant war with devs. This is only a single battle won by Blizzard, there will be new cheats and hacks shortly and so the fight goes on.

 

[MiskWisk]

I give it three days before the work around is completed. A month at absolute most for it to be circulated amongst the aimbot community.

 

[Erttheking]

It's a great change, but cheat and hack makers are in constant war with devs. This is only a single battle won by Blizzard, there will be new cheats and hacks shortly and so the fight goes on.

I give it three days before the work around is completed. A month at absolute most for it to be circulated amongst the aimbot community.

Probably why Blizzard is keeping quiet on it. To slow reactions to it down, if only a little.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I wonder how much the cheater community will whine about this...

Anyway, if this works, that's great.

 

[ima420r]

What's the point of an aimbot? The fun of the game is to play and get better. There is no money involved, like you don't get paid if you win more, so why use them?

I don't get it, but I am glad devs are working hard to prevent it.

 

[Veldel]

I wonder how much the cheater community will whine about this...

Anyway, if this works, that's great.

Hopefully in a amusing way so that i can laugh at them.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

In the end you can't really prevent a dedicated cheater/programmer who doesn't distribute his cheats. Anyone smart enough to do so will make his aim assist work close enough to humanoid to avoid detection.

Really good players, especially with high damage per shot weapons, already aim very mechanically in the first place. Recognize a moving target on the screen in a couple 100 msec, give their mouse a single linear sweep to intercept the likely future position of it's head and press the fire button at exactly the right time ... and they can do this with >>50% accuracy. No jitter, no hesitation.

 

[Riddle78]

In the end you can't really prevent a dedicated cheater/programmer who doesn't distribute his cheats. Anyone smart enough to do so will make his aim assist work close enough to humanoid to avoid detection.

Really good players, especially with high damage per shot weapons, already aim very mechanically in the first place. Recognize a moving target on the screen in a couple 100 msec, give their mouse a single linear sweep to intercept the likely future position of it's head and press the fire button at exactly the right time ... and they can do this with >>50% accuracy. No jitter, no hesitation.

I don't see how this is relevant. Aimbot detection looks for script runtimes,not movements,precisely because of how top-tier gamers interact with the game. Which is why this patch's change to character outlines is pretty clever; Rather than shore up their means to ID the aimbot,they render the aimbot literally blind,without effecting legitimate users.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

What's the point of an aimbot? The fun of the game is to play and get better. There is no money involved, like you don't get paid if you win more, so why use them?

Some people would rather win than play. It doesn't matter if the computer did the work; they won, you lost, so they're better than you.

 

[ffronw]

Might want to keep conscious of title font size

Spoiler: Looks bad on the home page

Warrants a super long title font size if whole words get cut off

 

[Combustion Kevin]

That is actually pretty clever.

Good job, Blizzard.

 

[TilMorrow]

Can confirm Soldier 76 and McCree Players have been unaffected, they still aimbot you when they ult.

In all seriousness, maybe now those too perfect Widowmakers and Hanzos players will stop "over-performing" for their teams, though I doubt this will affect Hanzo much. He can still shoot most characters in the foot and get a crit kill.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

I don't see how this is relevant. Aimbot detection looks for script runtimes,not movements

Once they are using image recognition (rather than just getting enemy location from memory or net traffic) it's rather trivial to do the processing on a different computer/VM. Can't really distinguish between someone recording to a NAS or passing image data to his bot.

When they have to rely on screwing up shortcuts used in image recognition algorithms to attack cheaters it kinda proves my point. In the end that's a losing battle, if a human can recognize it a computer can as well. Text captchas proved that and Overwatch can't distort images nearly as much as captcha tech could.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

What's the point of an aimbot? The fun of the game is to play and get better. There is no money involved, like you don't get paid if you win more, so why use them?

Some people would rather win than play. It doesn't matter if the computer did the work; they won, you lost, so they're better than you.

Or just to grief others.

Some just want to see the world burn, especially if there is little to no chance of getting burned themselves.

Met plenty of those in TF2 and they're arguably the worst of the lot.

 

[ima420r]

What's the point of an aimbot? The fun of the game is to play and get better. There is no money involved, like you don't get paid if you win more, so why use them?

Some people would rather win than play. It doesn't matter if the computer did the work; they won, you lost, so they're better than you.

Or just to grief others.

Some just want to see the world burn, especially if there is little to no chance of getting burned themselves.

Met plenty of those in TF2 and they're arguably the worst of the lot.

That at least makes sense to me. I don't condone it but I get it.