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GDC 2018: John McDonald (Valve) - Using Deep Learning to Combat Cheating in CSGO

A GDC 2018 talk by Valve's John McDonald on VACNet, a deep learning system that analyzes CS:GO gameplay to detect cheaters. It covers how the model is trained on human-reviewed Overwatch cases and how its output feeds human moderation.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN points to it as the definitive example of server-side, behavioral, non-invasive anti-cheat using machine learning, often as a counterpoint to kernel-level anti-cheat.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
max4warn
Topic
machine learning anti-cheat
Format
talk
Level
intermediate
HN recommenders in dataset
5
HN mentions in dataset
17
Recommendation years in dataset
2018–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • But you can detect serverside (at least probabilistically) if a user is abusing it to their advantage. Some Valve guy gave a great talk about their cheating detection a while back; I found it incredibly impressive: [VIDEO] (can't comment on their effectiveness these days, haven't …

    abuob on Hacker News · 2026-01
    In Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet

  • Valves John McDonald recently gave a talk at Gdc how they use machine learning to combat cheaters in CS:GO. Quite interesting to watch. [VIDEO]

    Trellmor on Hacker News · 2018-07
    In Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

  • If you wanna something more novel, look at this talk from Valve [0] on how they are integrating Deep Learning into their CS:GO cheater detection system (confusingly called Overwatch). It's not used to ban users, but rather to bring suspicious plays into their existing user-reviewed …

    ehsankia on Hacker News · 2018-07
    In Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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