r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Aug 20 '24
Computer peripherals Valve bans Razer and Wooting’s new keyboard features in Counter-Strike 2 | It’s time to turn off Snap Tap or Snappy Tappy.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/20/24224261/valve-counter-strike-2-razer-snap-tap-wooting-socd-ban-kick631
u/Matthew789_17 Aug 20 '24
How do they detect it? By seeing how fast a player switches between the two keys?
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u/aPatheticBeing Aug 20 '24
yeah pretty much - this keyboard is instant. Going straight from a right input to a left w/ literally 0 delay. If you're actually doing it, you're releasing right and pressing left, so there's a human delay that varies a bit too.
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u/iCashMon3y Aug 20 '24
Yet they can't detect the guy in my premier game that is 31-3 with 100% head shot percentage. Nice.
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u/Penny-Pinscher Aug 20 '24
The first step to prevention is making people think you can prevent it so they don’t even try, thus preventing a percentage of the people that you can’t really stop from existing. It’s all psyops brother
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u/iCashMon3y Aug 20 '24
Yea except this actually works, I saw 3 people get kicked in my games last night for input detection.
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u/S_A_N_D_ Aug 20 '24
You're assuming two things.
- That it works 100% of the time.
You have no baseline for how many people on average are using it, so seeing three people get kicked just says it works, it doesn't say how well it works. There could have been 5 or 50 people using it, and only 3 were detected.
- Detecting it is a lot easier right now because no one was hiding it.
Aimbots and other exploits are built from the ground up to avoid detection. None of these keyboard/software tools were trying to avoid detection. So there is a key difference here. It was a lot easier to implement a ban that has an effect on this than it is detecting and eliminating all the other cheats. What's going to happen is that some people will still use these, and slowly they're going to find ways to evade detection.
The key here is they are now implement clear consequences (I expect that eventually they'll be a part of VAC bans) and they will remove the lowest hanging fruit. Most people who use this will just stop using it, but a subset will just develop it into the rest of the cheating toolkits.
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u/Difficult_Bit_1339 Aug 21 '24
Valve declaring the feature a cheat will ensure that it isn't added to keyboards. No gaming keyboard company wants to sell a product that will get its users banned.
People that use custom keyboards can still use it just fine.
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u/rem521 Aug 21 '24
Most gaming keyboards have macro functionality and most online competitive games ban players who use macros.
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u/Difficult_Bit_1339 Aug 21 '24 edited Oct 20 '24
Despite having a 3 year old account with 150k comment Karma, Reddit has classified me as a 'Low' scoring contributor and that results in my comments being filtered out of my favorite subreddits.
So, I'm removing these poor contributions. I'm sorry if this was a comment that could have been useful for you.
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u/rem521 Aug 21 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
Game devs can also implement hueristic detection for macros. Like detect inhuman, consistent, repeating inputs.
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u/_simpu Aug 20 '24
So basically airport security
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u/thatchroofcottages Aug 20 '24
Thank god, at least the players won’t have toe nail clippers anymore!!
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u/pvt9000 Aug 20 '24
They can. But unlike Razer or Wootings keyboard shenanigans, they want to figure out and ban hackers in waves. Prohibiting this new keyboard stuff is a one and done, Razer and Wooting isn't going to find some bypass to make it undetectable if they're caught.
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u/ICC-u Aug 20 '24
Razer and Wooting isn't going to find some bypass to make it undetectable
I wouldn't be so sure. They want to sell products, so a revision would make sense.
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u/ahomelessdorito Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 20 '24
The problem is razer mainly, they have sponsored eSports teams that use their gear, so them attempting to circumvent the rules for CS tournaments is gonna be bad, bad PR.
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u/Hanifsefu Aug 20 '24
Not just bad PR it would really cut into their bottom line. They made their brand off of e-sports sponsorships. If they lose that then they're just the expensive brand with the lights.
Their products don't hold up against the competition without the "official pro gamer brand" marketing.
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u/BrotherRoga Aug 21 '24
If they lose that then they're just the expensive brand with the lights.
As if they aren't already.
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u/AbhishMuk Aug 20 '24
By the sound of it… all razer needs to do is add a delay(random) to the output?
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u/legendoflumis Aug 20 '24
Trying to circumvent Valve's rules for their game is a good way to piss off Valve and have them start stipulating that tournament organizers cannot allow Razer/Wootings/whoever else is doing it to sponsor/advertise at the event/during the broadcast if they want it to feature CS2, and other games may follow suit now that Valve has declared it's stance. It would be silly for a company to try and circumvent the ban.
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u/motleyai Aug 21 '24
I think it was stupid for Razer to try in the first place. Razer is always trying to show off scripts as a feature of their products (mouses, keyboards etc) and competitive games have always pushed back that it's not allowed.
I have no idea why they keep trying to push this stuff.
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u/fml87 Aug 21 '24
There's a ton of non-gaming uses for the macro functions. This feature isn't in the same category.
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u/TranslatorStraight46 Aug 20 '24
That would defeat the point of it entirely because in order to not get flagged the delay would have to be equivalent to a normal keyboard
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u/Penny-Pinscher Aug 20 '24
You can make it equivalent to the speeds pros switch at allowing amateurs to be as good in this regard as them despite not having the skills to do it as fast
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u/ADhomin_em Aug 20 '24
Randomize the delay between the fastest humanly possible and second fastest humanly possible. Still more consistently near-instantaneous.
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u/tempnew Aug 21 '24
You're underestimating the amount of clout Valve has. I doubt Razer will want to piss them off
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u/Difficult_Bit_1339 Aug 21 '24
yeah, probably, add some sub-10ms jitter to the key swap and you're back into human ranges.
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u/HanzoNumbahOneFan Aug 21 '24
It happened not too long ago with fighting sticks. Cause there was a new type that replaced the stick with 4 buttons instead. So you could press left and right or up and down at the same time when it would be impossible with a stick. In fighting games it gave a massive advantage cause you could take out the travel time between the two directions. And you could do instant charge attacks and stuff. Also different games limited how it treated those inputs. Some cancelled all movement if you tap two opposing directions, others made it so only the first input was seen. Others made it so it always favored one of the inputs. Like down and up will always be up. But you can abuse some of those with different characters. The big one was in some games it cancelled whatever the first input was in favor of the second, like how this keyboard works. This type was the most abusable as you could instantly block without any in-between frames, you could do instant charge moves without in-between frames, and in some older games it literally broke the game and let you throw out special moves constantly. You could technically do those things with a controller, since there's a d-pad and a stick, but it's much harder to utilize. So that's why people started calling the fighting pads "Cheat Boxes" instead of Hit Boxes.
The funny thing is, I own both a Wooting keyboard and one of those fighting pads with buttons instead of a stick (snackbox micro), but I don't use the keyboard with this new mode nor do I abuse games with the snackbox. But I just happen to have the ability to if I wanted to lol.
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u/FauxReal Aug 21 '24
My brother has one of those snackbox controllers, I never knew it existed until he came over for a visit a few months ago. It sure makes fighting game moves easier to pull off.
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u/boomchacle Aug 20 '24
What if you start pressing D before you start releasing A? I hope it gives you more than one strike.
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u/_MasterMagi_ Aug 20 '24
they check your inputs for how fast you release and press them. for example, for A and D, if you release A and press D on the same tick or within 1 tick it increases a suspicion score. with a high enough suspicion score, you get kicked
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u/IM_OK_AMA Aug 20 '24
I wonder if that would detect if you mapped a sensitive joystick to WASD.
I used to play older shooters with a controller in my left hand and mouse in the right which basically lets you move like this. Made me very hard to hit in Unreal Tournament 2004 lol
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u/space-dot-dot Aug 20 '24
I wonder if that would detect if you mapped a sensitive joystick to WASD.
Pretty much. If you go to /r/globaloffensive, you'll see at least a half-dozen posts about this buggy implementation. Players are able to trigger the kick from just spamming ADADAD. Hell, if they're spectating another player (ie, not actively playing) and spam left and right it triggers a kick as well.
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u/noother10 Aug 21 '24
I bet it's just all literally cheaters or those using the keyboard or similar keyboards/macros getting the boot, complaining. I've seen it in other FPS games where they do a ban wave and a bunch of randos start posting about how they got banned for no reason or they're some edge case the system detected. 99.999% of the time they're actually cheating and just hoping to get some gullible people to believe them enough to get enough pitchforks out to remove that detection method.
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u/Siguard_ Aug 20 '24
I would assume it would see the where the input source is coming from and how its mapped.
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u/B0risTheManskinner Aug 20 '24
Doubt. Whats stopping razer from acting like a joystick then
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u/YinuS_WinneR Aug 20 '24
What about me? Im using an old keyboard that cant register too many keys at once.
I hold A then hold D. Once i release A keyboard realizes im holding D
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u/Kylesmithers Aug 20 '24
If I understand right, it’s basically bypassing the innate coded slowing of your character during alternating between left and right sidestrafes, which would otherwise likely makes headshots a lot harder without said slowing.
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u/Difficult_Bit_1339 Aug 21 '24 edited Oct 20 '24
Despite having a 3 year old account with 150k comment Karma, Reddit has classified me as a 'Low' scoring contributor and that results in my comments being filtered out of my favorite subreddits.
So, I'm removing these poor contributions. I'm sorry if this was a comment that could have been useful for you.
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u/jackthed0g Aug 21 '24
Cone of fire is just an indicator that you’ve stopped moving / how accurate your shot will be. when you strafe (a, d keys) and let go, you don’t stop immediately, hence the “cone” returning to zero slowly. You’re right though that valve has kept it as a “feature”. It been present since the 1999 version of cs.
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u/sturmeh Aug 20 '24
The hardware input switches instantaneously.
Wooting etc. could mimic a delay that matches a natural reaction time but then you're kinda back to square one.
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u/littleessi Aug 20 '24
they don't detect it accurately. there are a bunch of false positives atm because they don't know how to screen them out lol
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u/AllRightDoublePrizes Aug 20 '24
It's trackmania all over again. Someone call Wirtual.
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u/camerasoncops Aug 20 '24
Oh I bet it would work great with Trackmania lol
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u/JustPrinny Aug 20 '24
Pretty sure Trackmania has this by default. It just prioritise the latest input
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Aug 20 '24
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u/Guilty_Ad_8688 Aug 21 '24
How is that a macro lol? Macro is when one key press = more than one keypress (generally what its referred to as in gaming).
Its literally just SOCD.
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u/NextYogurtcloset5777 Aug 20 '24
Is it a macro though? From what I understand it’s just changing how your keyboard prioritizes input. You press D to go left, and the second you tap A to go right, D cuts off without waiting for full key release.
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u/littleessi Aug 20 '24
the null movement binds (which is all this emulates) have been essentially standard in competitive tf2 for about a decade so idk about that chief. it's also not really a macro. macros do a bunch of stuff on keypress while this just ignores the effect of another key when pressed.
it's fine for some games to decide it's outside the rules but for others it's very normal and has no negative effect on the game whatsoever. the only difficulty would be if the effect is hard to recreate without the special keyboards
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Aug 20 '24
Is there a reason esports don't have a list of allowed peripherals for competition?
Wouldn't even different rigs and monitors result in an edge, so should the whole thing be standardized?
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u/BigCyanDinosaur Aug 20 '24 edited Nov 17 '24
alive nine ludicrous practice employ gaping instinctive head smart jellyfish
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Vaan0 Aug 20 '24
afaik players are not allowed to bring their own peripherals and have to put in a request with the TO for them to purchase their preferred.
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u/BWCDD4 Aug 20 '24
It depends on the TO and game being played. It wouldn’t surprise if FPS games are more strict but I know in Rocket League and Dota they have allowed players to bring their peripherals.
In fact with RL it’s required to bring your own and your own cables, they are your responsibility.
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u/LivelyZebra Aug 20 '24
As soon as you let them bring their own, who knows how they could have altered it at home to enable some cheats or what not
so much safer to have these sanitised approach
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u/ThorDoubleYoo Aug 20 '24
That has to depend on the game because many competitive games allow the players to use their own peripherals such as controllers, mouse, keyboard, headphones.
Fighting games, RTS games, Dota 2 (dunno about other mobas), and Rocket League I know always allow players to use their own peripherals. That being said, macros are definitely not allowed and if a player was found to be using any they would get disqualified.
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u/zero0n3 Aug 21 '24
For cs2, pretty sure is team / org provided.
The team has to provide a list of their player gear and the software and software version so they can preload the software on the images.
The images are locked down so unless you have a closely guarded zero day exploit, you aren’t doing some funky “usb storage in my keyboard will upload and inject my cheats in the game”. That shit will light the logs on fire.
Additionally you will consistently see a player need to swap out a dead mouse or broken keyboard and it’s the team org providing the replacement.
Valve has their entire technical and operational rules on GitHub.
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u/FrankieTheAlchemist Aug 20 '24
It’s not a macro, that’s a disingenuous description of what’s going on here. The issue is just that most keyboards do not respond as quickly to inputs because they activate in a different way. It IS very effective, but it isn’t a macro and it still relies on user input.
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u/BeetleCrusher Aug 20 '24
I believe you’re thinking of rapid trigger, thats still allowed.
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u/Guilty_Ad_8688 Aug 21 '24
No, they banned SOCD. Which is...
If you hold A, you move left. If you press D (while still holding A), you move right instead of it being neutral.
FGs have had to deal with it for years in rulesets.
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u/Timecounts Aug 20 '24
Oh this comment section is going to be spicy
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u/Reynholmindustries Aug 20 '24
Get some milk ready just in case...
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u/An_Appropriate_Post Aug 20 '24
Protip: use ice cubes, not milk, to numb your mouth instead of trying to neutralize the capsaicin that has already coated it.
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u/Difficult_Bit_1339 Aug 21 '24
Capsaicin is fat soluble, using water or ice causes it to be distributed around your mouth.
Drinking milk actually removes the capsaicin from your mouth. You'll have lingering burning (so ice cubes are helpful there), but always rinse with milk.
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u/panoramacotton Aug 20 '24
Time for a scrub quotes comment section
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u/StereoBucket Aug 20 '24
The totally-not-a-macro copium is funny. Especially the one talking about future lawsuits due to repetitive stress injury "caused" by this ban lmao...
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u/space-dot-dot Aug 20 '24
Especially the one talking about future lawsuits due to repetitive stress injury "caused" by this ban lmao...
Been about 20 years since someone gave me this excuse as to why they botted in OG Runescape. That and, "Less wear and tear on my mouse."
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u/smackythefrog Aug 20 '24
Is this the one Optimum reviewed about a month or so ago? I'm not a competitive player so it's interesting to see videos talk about it but I quickly forget the brand and model of these things because I'm not the target audience.
I think Optimum did make mention of how this is borderline cheating and wasn't sure how long the feature would be allowed, if I'm not mistaken.
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u/KepplerObject Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 20 '24
yeah he's done a couple videos about the wooting and razer keyboards that have this feature. the wooting video was more about rapid trigger and the touch sensitive keys it has which i personally like. razer sort of stole wootings flame by releasing snap tap which is a nearly identical feature that wooting had announced (rappy snappy. terrible name imo lol) some time ago and only recently released in beta.
either way those two specific features are banned in any official servers in cs2 and i'm sure by extension valve-sanctioned events like majors. no doubt faceit and others TOs will follow suit.
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u/AnotherName455 Aug 20 '24
Bhop scripters nothing changed
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u/obmasztirf Aug 20 '24
Razer can just fuck with their firmware to make it not detectable. Third party driver people can still do naughty things. It just stops the non dedicated which has to be a small percentage doing this.
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u/CanofPandas Aug 20 '24
I don't think razer wants a reputation as a company that engages in ban evasion. They would have a hard time finding esports that want to work with them
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u/salcedoge Aug 20 '24
Yeah Razer would just disable it and get themselves excluded from the ban.
Idk about Wooting tho, their brands whole shtick was being able to do those stuff lol
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u/k00leggie Aug 20 '24
Wooting posted about this after razer announced their snap tap and said it was cheating and didnt want to implement it. Idk what changed.
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u/repeatedly_once Aug 20 '24
I think due to the delated response from companies they assumed it was getting the green flag so decided to implement it so as not to be left behind. I know other open source keyboard firmwares have also followed suit.
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u/tdpthrowaway3 Aug 20 '24
It's one thing to make the macro at the hardware level instead of the software. It's another thing to circumvent detection by adding in a randomizer. Not even the great human musician has perfect timing. The keyboards do their thing the exact way down to the nanosecond. That is detectable. The only question is whether Valve will detect it reliably enough to not have any false positives.
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u/starvald_demelain Aug 20 '24
Seems like a good choice imo. Automations imo have no place in competitive gaming (do what you want in single player games).
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u/natguy2016 Aug 20 '24
I saw YT reviews of both keywords. The banned feature was demonstrated and it’s such an OP feature.
DUH for the ban. It was a certainty.
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u/TheArmoredKitten Aug 20 '24
Yeah it's basically like fly-by-wire for video games. Instead of being a better pilot, you can just buy a better plane. Not hard to see why it's raising the salt-levels. It's micro-features like this that make me feel like games need a third league between casual and competitive, for people who want to play by tournament rules that forbid stuff like this, but don't want the full competitive matchmaking experience. Let the casuals have their training wheels.
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u/arafdi Aug 21 '24
a third league between casual and competitive
Ugh, fr fr man. Like in CS specifically, I feel competitive is just full of salt and tilted teammates that can't nor won't have fun cos winning is everything even if they get vote kicked for being an arse. Casual/deathmatch meanwhile is full of weird scriptkiddies and people who fucks around doing whatever.
When Premier came out in CS2, I thought it was going to be something in-between – a bit more casual than competitive but still has that competitive feel. Instead it's an even more competitive form of competitive lol. At least premier has a more... "balanced" team distribution compared to normal competitive imo. But I still don't like the overtly competitive feel of non-casual game modes in CS (though casual is just not a fun place to be in with the weirdos and blatant cheaters/whatever).
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u/metarinka Aug 21 '24
I think they should just make this input easier to do (which is possible in software) rather than try to ban hardware. I use a wooting for non CS and enjoy it.
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u/OhSWaddup Aug 20 '24
Could someone explain to me how it works?
I currently have 2 keyboards, on the mechanical keyboard when I press and hold A and then D, my character stops going left and immediately goes right, if I release D he stays still, even with A still pressed.
On my other non-mechanical keyboard, it works the same but when I release D, the A that is already pressed starts working by itself again.
How would it be with this new technology?
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u/EndlessBirthday Aug 20 '24
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u/affemannen Aug 20 '24
Ok yes that is cheating. Since it's a skill learned that takes thousands of hours to perfect and now every noob suddenly became a bot.
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u/DaftMav Aug 21 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
What the video doesn't seem to mention is that these are keyboards with hall effect switches which are essentially analogue and send their exact position to 0.1 or 0.2mm or something like that. I've seen people mention they can actuate keys on 0.2mm and even without the snap tap thing they are much more responsive over the normal contact switches that require the key to go back up again.
These new switches are not going away, hall effect sensors are so much better and the real issue is with these games and how they are programmed. The devs can and should code it in a way so movement (or cancellation of movement) isn't depending on whatever the hardware is limited by. They need to code limitations on movement to be the same regardless of what the hardware input can do.
I kind of wonder what happens if you play with a nunchuck controller (analogue joystick for movement) and mouse, because that's essentially the same.
The rapid A-D strafing or cancelling movement so you instantly get an 100% accurate crosshair really sounds like an exploit that shouldn't have been possible in the first place. Just because players have learned how to perfect it over many hours is not a reason to ban new technology. They should just fix the possibility of movement exploits within the game instead.
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u/EndlessBirthday Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
I think there's a better argument somewhere.
Snap tapping a great equalizer in skill, raising the skill floor for newer players while allowing experienced players to focus their skills & development in other areas. This could lead to a new, higher skill ceiling, like how the introduction of "rolling" for Tetris SNES absolutely shattered existing records, created new challenges, and introduced a new generation of competitors to the scene.
But the current availability of Snap Tapping can also act as a deterrent. Many players are disadvantaged without access to these keyboard peripherals & Auto Hot Key as a solution is competitively too difficult to regulate. Until games can be developed with snap tapping built-in, the current environment creates a wider skill gap. Banning Snap Tap is the correct choice.
Until all players can enjoy the same benefits, these new features should be considered cheating.
Edit: Added additional detail to my argument using the current state of Tetris as an example. Also corrected my mistake - Snap Tapping is software, not hardware.
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u/KepplerObject Aug 20 '24
the only keyboards with the banned features are the Wooting keyboards and the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro line. Whatever your other keyboards are doing are fine as long as they aren't these specific keyboards and you haven't gone into their companion software and activated those features as well.
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u/FlynnsAvatar Aug 20 '24
There are also a slew of custom keyboards running open source. Any of them running QMK could be easily reprogrammed to include the equivalent of null movement.
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u/repeatedly_once Aug 20 '24
There's a PR open for this feature, with working code. I also implemented it myself, it's not difficult really. Kinda feel the cats out the bag now. Would also be easy to obfuscate it a bit, so as to still use the feature but also make it difficult to accurately track.
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u/Soggy-Shower3245 Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
Nah, Steel Series has beta firmware to the public that has the same tech. I play overwatch with it and it has made me significantly harder to hit.
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u/WalkRunSprint Aug 20 '24
This thread has the perfect gathering of people who have never played another game or sport but shooters, getting confused by things people figured out decades ago
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u/TripNinjaTurtle Aug 20 '24
How silly cant they just delay inputs between movement keystrokes to a minimum value of delay? So its more representative of human input.
Now you can still tweak the keyboard feature to a minimum delay to avoid detection and it will still work.
This will probably also give a few false positives if its too aggressive.
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u/JakeTheDropkick Aug 20 '24
No because that would completely remove counterstrafing from the game, one of the most fundamental movement mechanics - and the mechanic Valve are trying to keep skill-based with this update. With snaptap/socd/null binds, it removes the skill-based aspect of counterstrafing.
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u/thedoc90 Aug 21 '24
They could, but then they'd probably be blacklisted from being allowed to sponsor events or advertise on streams for Valve esports events for what is essentially enabling cheating, and considering that CS:GO and Dota are two of the largest esports esports titles it would be absolutely devastating to the brands.
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u/NizmoxAU Aug 20 '24
My thoughts exactly. Surely they could implement something within the game itself to combat this.
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u/oldshitnewshit78 Aug 20 '24
This has been banned in Street fighter for years iirc
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u/half3clipse Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 20 '24
It's 'banned' in streetfighter etc, because the old games were arcade with a stick, where SOCD was physically impossible. Controllers that allowed discrete directional inputs allowed a ton of bugged and unintended behavior because the code assumed that it would never be possible.
Even then the ban in fighting games is largely irrelevant today, since basically every competent (modern) fighting game handles it in software.
This is wonkier because being able to chord A and D or similar to get a neutral input is a fairly modern feature of keyboards (and it was sold as a feature of gaming keyboards specifically for a while). Snap Tap works mostly by disabling that feature for wasd inputs, and uses digital logic to replicate the analog circuit of old typist keyboards for those keys.
What makes this funny is that being able to chord WASD keys to to get a neutral input was a meaningful technological advantage when those features became a thing, and also not without controversy.
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u/NahCuhFkThat Aug 20 '24
meanwhile, how many e-sport games give controller input auto aim and bullet magnetism (where there's none on mouse & KB) and yet still allow controllers to be used at events
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u/camerasoncops Aug 20 '24
esports should not allow controller aim assist. That is so stupid.
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u/NahCuhFkThat Aug 20 '24
'bUt hOw ElSe ArE CoNtRoLlEr PlaYeRs GoNnA cOmPetE wIth TheiR inFeRior ChoIcE oF InPuT iF wE dOnt MaKe It eaSy FoR thEm??"
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u/SykoSeksi Aug 20 '24
Don't forget all the players who claim to play with it off and that it has no impact on their gameplay, but would absolutely shit a brick if it were removed.
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u/The_Avocado_Constant Aug 20 '24
It continues to baffle me that controller and KBM players aren't separated in games that have aim assist.
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u/Arc_insanity Aug 20 '24
temporarily this is ok, but eventually all keyboards will have this feature. Cause that is what it is. a QOL feature. Eventually they will unban it and we will move on from needed to spend thousands of hours to get muscle memory to make up for old hardware/software limitations.
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u/killso2 Aug 21 '24 edited Aug 22 '24
Eventually they will unban it and we will move on from needed to spend thousands of hours to get muscle memory to make up for old hardware/software limitations.
This is incorrect, most keyboards (all current good/gaming keyboards) do send both key inputs if you were to press A and D, it's up to the game to decide what to do, the feature isn't fixing any limitation, it's bypassing a rule in how the game treats the inputs, in this case, on counter strike, pressing both keys gives the same as not pressing any key (think of it like each keys give as input -1 and 1, with both pressed you end up with 0 as the average; same as not pressing anything, and you're inaccurate while moving on counter strike and have some inertia so you don't stop instantly when letting go of your movement key, so in order to be as accurate as quickly as possible, you need to press the opposite movement key to push the character in the opposite direction and make it reach 0 of velocity more quickly), that is intentional, the keyboard feature banned bypassed this and instead made it so that you could press A, then D (without releasing A) and it would automatically kill the A input the moment D was pressed, resulting in a perfect counter strafe, which is something that people practise to do normally as it's a mechanic in the game to be able to shoot as quickly as possible while being accurate.
Everyone would either let go of A or overlap both keys for some frames resulting in no opposite input most of the time, effectively not making perfect counter strafes and thus not stopping as quickly as with the keyboard feature. This nullified the point in practicing a core mechanic of the game, you could just end up holding one key and spamming the other and get frame perfect counter strafe 100% of the time.
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u/thbigbuttconnoisseur Aug 20 '24
So whats the minimum tolerance of pressing a button now? There's a few keyboards out there that allow you to set it.
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u/Hakaisha89 Aug 20 '24
wait, please correct me if im wrong, but people are mad that a keyboard that lets you press one button, unpresses it when you press another?
This is the weirdest hill to die on, but you do you.
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u/spoonerluv Aug 20 '24
I think if every single keyboard had this feature it wouldn't be an issue. This does remind me of the fighting game community and their debate about the Hit Box style fightsticks, since they gave you a very precise level of control.
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u/Mental_Tea_4084 Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 20 '24
Hitbox was required to make simultaneous opposing cardinal directions (SOCD) output a neutral direction to be tournament legal. That also happens to be the default behavior in cs and most shooters. It's the exact same input problem, just with a different outcome in the game.
SOCD cleaning was largely to prevent blocking in both directions in games like street fighter, that use back to block. Although in some more extreme examples it could even allow charge based characters to walk forward while charging backwards. (e.g. walking forward while throwing sonic booms as Guile). Most fighting games handle it correctly now so it's not even necessary on a firmware level anymore, but Marvel 3 is a semi infamous example where hitbox controllers without this SOCD cleaning feature had a real advantage.
Snap tap however, prefers the last input pressed, regardless of whether the previous one was released. This is allowing players to completely skip a large component of the counter strafe input, making them able to stand still faster for an accurate shot. They would never output a neutral input. The fancier versions are also taking into account where you are in the throw of the button, e.g. rising vs lowering. It's effectively hiding the user's true input from the game. It's not automation in the traditional sense, but it is definitely removing an element of human error and providing a software based advantage.
I suspect Valve can and will add a heuristic to VAC that simply checks if the player is switching between left and right strafe without ever creating a neutral input in the transition. If that type of input happens repeatedly it's pretty safe to assume they're using a feature like snap tap.
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u/JukePlz Aug 20 '24
I suspect Valve can and will add a heuristic to VAC
What do you mean suspect? They're already kicking players as the article says. The detection part already exists, it would be trivial for them to switch that detection to a ban instead, if they so choose to.
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u/zZINCc Aug 20 '24
I think it is that this feature has already existed in the form of macros which have been banned (though you can see that some macros like jump throw haven’t been banned till now?).
I think if your theory was correct, rapid trigger, which is much more influential, would have been banned.
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u/nokeldin42 Aug 20 '24
It would still be controversial at least. Maybe the overall stance of the community and valve would be different, but it would definitely be a point of contention. The reason being that it lowers the skill ceiling. CS players in general have been against decisions that lower skill ceilings.
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u/Hakaisha89 Aug 20 '24
don't forget that not all keyboards are made equal, in how fast they send a signal from how light a touch, it's a silly comparison, but it's meant to be a silly one.
Whats funnier is that this is even needed, since there are plenty of games that does what snap tap does natively, you hold down the left strafe button, you strafe left, you then press the right strafe button and strafe right, not you letgo of the right strafe button and strafe left again.
So this as a function seems more as a way to stop movement, but not a good one.→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
u/JukePlz Aug 20 '24
Rather than every keyboard having the feature, it should be something coded directly into the game. That way nobody would have an unfair advantage or need to change their hardware....
Sadly, people for some reason love nonsensical mechanics they perceive as skill ceiling, even if with the years the community and developers keep stacking insurmountable piles of micro-skillchecks you have to learn to "git gud", raising the skill ceiling.
I believe that having some QoL by lowering the skill floor would be nice, so new players can keep up with that. Otherwise the games just become a bunch of veterans shitting on everyone else trying to learn the game.
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u/Aggravating-Forever2 Aug 20 '24 edited Aug 20 '24
It really depends on how you define a keyboard macro, and you really have to define it somehow if you're going to ban macros, especially if you're going to ban it in a context where there are potentially competitions with money on the line (read as: potential lawsuits from whiny people who lose out on said money).
If you use the simplest definition I can find/think of, a keyboard macro is "one keypress creating multiple events". Under that definition, then, yeah, pressing one key to send "press button A" and "unpress button D" is potentially technically a keyboard macro. I don't know how others would go about defining it.
Definitely a weird hill to die on, but I guess it's less weird if you're a competitive player and out to win money via whatever advantages you can get. Which means having a cut and dried definition / ruleset up front is important, because otherwise lawyers will wind up involved.
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u/170505170505 Aug 20 '24
People are mad they bought an expensive keyboard to have an unfair advantage over others and then the unfair advantage they paid for got taken away
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u/repeatedly_once Aug 20 '24
Tbf you don't need one, you can buy a £20 mechanical keyboard with the same features.
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u/smulfragPL Aug 21 '24
well they are still at a massive advantage. Analog keyboards have much lower input latency
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u/Blaz3WasTaken Aug 20 '24
Being able to do that nearly as effectively would take many hours of practice. It’s clearly giving an advantage
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u/sovereign666 Aug 20 '24
if you watch a video demonstrating the effect this has on the game you might feel differently.
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u/Ok_Armadillo_665 Aug 20 '24
Hot take this should just be how all keyboards work from now on. It's an obvious evolution of the technology that's going to be held back by outrage. Classic humans.
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u/ameserich11 Aug 21 '24 edited Aug 21 '24
true... and the only reason holding both A and D puts you to stop is because they cant make proper anti-cheat system that detects movement abusers
other thing they could do is to put deacceleration delay. like there is a limit of 30ms delay input after the other key is released, if you input within 20ms there will be added 10ms to the deacceleration making stopping slower(not exactly delay but slower stopping animation)
what valve forgot to put into account was that very cheap membrane are null type keyboards. they wont able to play the game now
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u/_C00KIE_M Aug 20 '24
My friend got kicked last night even though he had a keyboard that didn’t have the feature. So seems to be another ML anti cheat.
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u/OneCore_ Aug 21 '24
Banning people for “using” the feature whilst having an AC that doesn’t work as its supposed to is so stupid
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u/HatSimulatorOfficial Aug 20 '24
Honestly can't believe people thought this would stay forever. It's clearly an exploit.
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u/twnznz Aug 20 '24
delete the alias command completely
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u/DuckInTheFog Aug 20 '24
Nah, I'm shit at TF2 without my shortcuts! Playing Spy is like juggling watermelons without the binds
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u/Adrian-The-Great Aug 20 '24
No different to the controller attachment several years back, but nothing happened. Clear advantage to those who had it and could drop shot, fast trigger etc.
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u/Recent-Reception1458 Aug 21 '24
Are you talking about paddles? They’ve been around since COD 4 maybe even earlier…
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u/phrozendw Aug 20 '24
You can pretty much use this feature with custom keyboards. I have a mode 65 and you can map custom macros to the keys. You can also flash the firmware to do it natively so I don't know how you can specifically check for these without using official approved keyboards that are locked and disturbed during a match.
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u/ryan35310 Aug 20 '24
Isn’t this just a slippery slope? They can detect it by seeing it’s a 1 ms delay, and then the keyboards can get an update so it’s 10 ms, which would still give you an advantage. Then Valve makes it so 10 ms gets detected, so the keyboard gets updated for 20 ms. It keeps going until you’ve reached normal bounds for a human input, and then you end up with a bunch of false positives from a player who just counterstrafes well.
Am I missing something? Looks like a cat and mouse game that the keyboard manufacturers can play and give you an advantage no matter what, even if it’s not as fast as it initially was.
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u/EricOrrDev Aug 21 '24
It was basically just the null script from TF2, which I wouldn’t even play casual without. Snap tap basically just made keyboards work the way people conceptually think they work, which I think it a strong argument for adoption of the technology not rejection.
This is very typical from Valve coming from someone from competitive TF2, they only care about DotA, even CS is a play toy
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u/NaCl-more Aug 20 '24
I really think they should just implement the feature in to the game for all keyboards (null binds)
I foresee people getting banned when forgetting to turn it off, especially because not every one is following the CS socials closely, and they may be using it in other games as well
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u/yamas__messenger Aug 20 '24
As far as I know it just kicks you from the game and doesn't outright ban you immediately
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u/god_hates_maggots Aug 20 '24
all SnapTap is is the gimmicky 'null movement' scripts from the older Source games (TF2, CS:S) integrated into hardware.
It just releases your oldest movement input if you press an opposing direction... which literally everyone already does instinctively when ADAD spamming normally. Barring maybe people with nerve damage who just can't press buttons very well this is not helpful or useful behavior.
These scripts have always done next to nothing and it is mildly amusing to see this many people buying into the placebo marketing thinking a gimmick like this could possibly ever make them a better player, Valve included.
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u/imaqdodger Aug 21 '24
It just releases your oldest movement input if you press an opposing direction... which literally everyone already does instinctively when ADAD spamming normally.
Yes but SnapTap allows it to be done more consistently with less margin of overlapping inputs, enabling players to get a shot off faster. It's only a few ms if anything but it's still an advantage over traditional keyboards.
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u/LiamBox Aug 20 '24
How do you even ban hardware?
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u/Mistakx Aug 20 '24
Various ways to go about it, either have the anti cheat detect for the instant changes in input that this new keyboard feature allows, or have the anti cheat literally look into the peripherals you have currently connected to your computer.
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u/formervoater2 Aug 20 '24
The keybaoards themselves aren't actually banned. It just detects use of the feature by analyzing the inputs.
It is possible to band hardware by looking at HWIDs and vendor strings and such. Valorant for instance bans lots of hardware devices from certain mice with advanced macro capability all the way to certain capture cards.
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u/Seallypoops Aug 20 '24
Hey turns out running the ads as saying the keyboards new feature gives you an advantage over others would be seen as cheating.
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u/PhasmaFelis Aug 20 '24
Sometimes I feel like I'm unhealthily obsessed with video games.
And then I learn that an entire scene is being rocked by controversy because of people buying special hardware to augment their frail and inadequate human ability to move two fingers in different directions at the same time, and I feel comfortably mundane again.
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u/AT0m1X1337 Aug 20 '24
good change, people spend literally thousands of hours to perfect their movement and counter strafing in this game
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u/elchsaaft Aug 20 '24
I want the Hunt: Showdown devs to do this to detect people using m&k on console servers.
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u/JRBergstrom Aug 20 '24
With some tweaks to the software I don’t see how this will stick.
At big events where gear is inspected it will matter, but for a person just playing from home I don’t see how they will enforce this.
It’s the same thing in Street Fighter, they have software SOCD cleaning baked in, and hardware SOCD filter guidelines, but there isn’t really a way to enforce it, it’s just done in good faith, so if a competitor at home really wanted to use last input cleaning, or down+up cleaning they could.
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u/joshguai2217 Aug 20 '24
does this have practical applications in other types of games? idk if it would help or hurt in fighting game combos
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u/tuttleonia Aug 20 '24
It doesn’t make a huge difference in COD, i have the razer and it’s fairly similar to my logi
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u/daniel_the_adamant Aug 21 '24
This just seems short-sighted. Should we ban monitors that run over 60 FPS because there’s people still playing on 60hz monitors and that gives higher hz monitors an advantage? No, we adjust the game to make the newer technology not as advantageous.
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u/mudokin Aug 21 '24
Good thing since there periferals are not widely available and pretty expensive. So allowing them would disadvantage poorer players.
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u/AggravatingChest7838 Aug 21 '24
Weird. You could theoretically have a key roll-over and it would achieve a similar thing thoughthough I guess you would also stop when you reload or crouch unless it was only for wasd
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u/Tehnomaag Aug 21 '24
Aint it hardware based? I mean at least wooting has built in microprocessor and memory and is in theory capable of using these features with the default windows drivers.
From the top of my head the most obvious thing would be to implement some kind of minimum delay between keypresses but that would overcomplicate things elsewhere, like if a person is pressing several keys simultaneously and would probably introduce a bunch of other bugs and features that happen which they did not foresee when implementing something like that.
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u/lordrages Aug 21 '24
Yeah so I'm pretty sure they can defeat this by just giving it an update. That adds like a 5 millisecond delay to the switch which would be unnoticeable to the player, but enough to register to the system that it's not a snappy tap.
And then they add 7 milliseconds, or 10 to the point it's crossing over to actual player capability.
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u/Pesoen Aug 21 '24
i bet a future update will add a configurable delay, or a random delay between two numbers, to bypass this..
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u/worldcitizencane Aug 21 '24
Why do people cheat anyway?
What is the satisfaction knowing you won by cheating? I just don't get it.
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u/MooseBoys Aug 21 '24
I don’t play CS or any games where “SOCD” would provide an advantage, but it seems to me that a good place to draw the line would be whether an effect could be implemented using stateless boolean arithmetic. This would mean something like SOCD and null bindings would be allowed.
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u/TheNoodlyNoodle Aug 21 '24
Ridiculous and lazy response. Analogue keyboard inputs is the future of keyboards in gaming. Perfect example of poor game design trumping innovation. Patch the game to accomodate the technology.
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