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CS:GO Resources – Overwatch, the Crowd-sourced Cheat Control Beta

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How are Overwatch bans applied?

Overwatch bans are applied when selected members of the CS:GO Community, known as “investigators”, review a replay of a reported player's game and vote on the infraction(s) they believe the player, known as a “suspect”, has committed.

Overwatch cases are generated based on a number of factors, and once a case is created, it is sent to a number of Overwatch investigators, who vote on penalties for annoying behaviour, cheating, both infractions, or neither. If the Overwatch investigators are unanimous in their verdict of guilt, the suspect is given a minor or major infraction block.

What evidence is available to investigators?

The investigators are shown a replay of a randomly selected eight-round segment of a game of the accused player. Their task is to determine whether or not that player committed an infraction during that replay.

Suspected players are referred to as “The Suspect” and the names of the other players and the text and voice chats are omitted. The investigator is expected to make a decision based solely on the suspect's actions.

I have received an Overwatch block for a minor infraction, what does this mean?

Minor infraction Overwatch bans are for disruptive in-game behaviour and last for a minimum of 30 days. For the duration of the ban, you will not be able to play on VAC-protected servers or trade or sell your CS:GO items.

When the ban expires, you will be able to resume playing on VAC-protected servers and trade and sell your CS:GO items. Please note that a second Overwatch ban for a minor infraction may result in your account being permanently blocked.

I received an Overwatch block for a major infraction, what does this mean?

Overwatch Major Infringement bans are for cheating and are permanent. From now on, you will not be able to play on VAC-protected servers or trade or sell your CS:GO items. If you want to play CS:GO on VAC-protected servers, you will need to create a new Steam account.

How does a player become a suspect in an Overwatch case?

Players become suspects when their reporting pattern is higher or stands out from that of other players. They may have a sudden spike in complaints or have accumulated many over a long period of time. In any case, our data shows that suspects in Overwatch cases should be investigated for a range of possible infractions.

Can I appeal my Overwatch ban?

No. No, it is not possible to appeal any Overwatch bans and Steam Support cannot remove them. Since these are only issued when the investigators unanimously agree on a sanction, we are confident that any Overwatch bans that have been applied should be upheld. It is sufficient for a single Overwatch investigator to disagree with a guilty verdict for the suspect to receive no block at all.

I believe I was reported by lower skill level players who thought I was cheating and that caused me to be blocked from Overwatch. Can this block be removed?
No. Even if you were reported by lower skill level players, Overwatch investigators are culled from various higher skill groups to ensure we have coverage of different types of CS:GO players.

It is not necessary for a player to be exceptionally skilled to be a good Overwatch investigator. For example, we would expect commentators to be good investigators, regardless of their skill level, given their experience in observing high-level matches.

Can I transfer my CS:GO items to another Steam account?

No. It is not possible to transfer items or games from an Overwatch-locked account to a different account. However, new games can still be purchased and registered on an Overwatch-locked account, and the account can still receive items, but not ship them.

Players with Overwatch minor infringement bans will be able to trade and sell items once the ban expires. Players blocked from Overwatch for major violations will no longer be able to trade or sell their CS:GO items because the block is permanent.

36 Replies to “CS:GO Resources – Overwatch, the Crowd-sourced Cheat Control Beta”

This is all I was thinking while I was watching this, crowdsourcing cheat detection is not a good way to go about it. Valve is clearly trying to make up for their lacklustre VAC protection but this will do more harm than good IMO.

Hey spade! why is your crosshair so small? i think when the crosshair is small, you wont be able to spray good as you normally would on big sized crosshair like 5. I think you should really try out cl_crosshairsize 5 cl_crosshairgap -1 cl_crosshairstyle 4 cl_crosshaircolor 1 cl_crosshairalpha 255

awesome. Its about time valve did something like this. games been out for over a decade. and they are just now decide to do this. knowing their anti cheat hasn't been that great sense they implemented it.

Worth experimenting with. I adopted this crosshair from a config file someone sent me, and it seemed to work better for me when I switched to it. I might experiment with this again in the future although at the moment I feel pretty used to it.

This is guy says he is new. Therefore REALLY exped non cheating players reviewed by new players = ban most likely. sigh alot of innocent people gonna get hit by this once it goes LIVE + if someone comes across someone who raped them 16-0 or something you know what they gonna do, OPTION #1 LOLGG

I like the idé if valve just use this as a time saver. Like they just take those videos with most negative votes and then they will look it through them self. I really dont hope the retarded comunity votes will determine if you get ban or not. because just take one match of cs:go and there is allways some one who gets called a cheater.

Overwatch is a great idea… only people with many reports in short time will been shown in overwatch.. so rage reports and shit is no problem (a heard about 25+ reports in 24h) no clean player get this amount of reports in such a short time, and when he gets there a pepole looking his clean demo.

Im sure overwatch is the solution for the cheating problem in Counter-strike !

This this rly works! I went ~5 hrs with full rage aimbot settings to community & MM servers- and bam ! I was banned the next day for 35days. never experienced such a fast "ban" for years in VAC games! Great work and good luck in catching up!

i used to wall-hack in counter-strike (just to know enemy location) and i wouldn't shoot through walls or anything but i would be prepared to just bum rush and not have to care which direction to look. i knew how to fake walling and after some time it was really boring so i went back to non-hacks and it was even more fun. it was fun mainly because i knew whether or not someone was hacking just by looking and how they played and even today i see plenty of instances like this in dm servers.

Not likely. There has to be a consensus, about 10 verdicts before the person is banned. I think Spade may have been given overwatch simply because he's famous on the globaloffensive subreddit and because he seems like a rational, calm guy. Everyone else I know who got in has at least 170 competitive wins. I imagine most of the people who call "hacks" at every corner would get fed up of the game before getting that many wins.

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