We all realize that lately the community is filled with hackers, maybe it was always like that but with the recent trends in gaming community (rise of PUBG and fall of CS:GO in terms of number of players etc.), the hackers I come accross are much more nowadays. Yes, we all realize and suffer from it. I am sick of people who cheat, sick of losing rank because a party member is banned and sick of losing ranks because I played against an obvious hacker. What can we do? We can clean the community by ourselves, as the true players of this game and we can do what Valve has failed to do for years which eventually led to CS: GO's recent fall.

All of us bought and sold keys, all of us have good looking inventories, and all of us have put in time, effort, and hard earned money into this game. For what? For these hackers to steal our fun? For these hackers to ruin it for us? For Valve to do what they never have done? Come on people, wake up. Valve is not going to do anything and in the end, we, all, will lose. All the keys you have, all the cases you had opened, all the money you have poured for "cool skins" will be for nothing.

Lately I've started to do the Overwatch more often, I do it 4-5 times a day if I have played it and I realized why I have stopped doing it in the first place. Again, because of us, the CS: GO gaming community.

Let's not kid ourselves, sometimes we just suck and most of the time the people who dominate us in the game are not hackers. They are just having a better day than we do. So before we report, we better make sure of it because there are certain disadvantages of the Overwatch and to make a proper judgement, we must be aware of those.

The Steam Support give the following definition about Overwatch: "Overwatch is an in-game replay review system that lets the CS:GO community regulate itself by allowing qualified and experienced members of the community, called ‘Investigators‘, to review reports of disruptive behavior, determine whether those reports are valid, and apply temporary bans if appropriate."

In other words, it means, you do what the moderators of the servers should but won't do. To actually monitor the games and take action against the hackers. Because Valve is lazy, because Valve profits from re-selling the game to the hackers, whatever you'd like to call it.

But to simply put, Overwatch is a mission where you watch the suspected hacker from their point of view and try to determine and make a decision about whether the suspect actually cheated or not. According to the information, in order to become an Overwatch investigator, you must have satisfactory levels of the following stats:

"Competitive wins
Account age
Hours played
Skill group
Low report count
If applicable, prior Overwatch participation level and score (a function of an Investigator's accuracy) will be taken into account. Community members who maintain both a high level of activity and high Overwatch scores will receive more cases to participate in."

For further information, please see: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7562-IPJN-1009#overwhat

1. With Overwatch, we cannot rely on any intel that the actual players might have given in the game. So, we must watch carefully and listen to the game. Maybe that person turned around because of one intel he received in-game, we can't know that for sure. That is why, do it carefully, and think why you would have done that. Because let's admit it, we don't use the radio commands at all.

2. Aim hacks are very obvious from the suspect's point of view. The cursor moves in such a speed which is humanly impossible. Don't miss it.

3. Wall hacks are very obvious in some cases while not so very obvious in some cases (see number 1)

4. Stop reporting people during warm-up. It steals valuable time from the Overwatch activity and it is almost impossible to find someone who cheat during a warm-up except for aim hacks.

5. Just because someone's profile has lots of trash comments that claim he is a hacker, it doesn't always mean that he is one. Take a look at the number of hours this player had played the game, take a look at his overall and recent stats if possible.

6. Not every great player is a hacker, maybe he is just having an amazing game and the opponents can't keep up, be mindful of that. Because you're just an average player, with average stats. Just because you cannot do that, it doesn't mean nobody can. I, for example, cannot dunk. But there are literally millions of people who could dunk.

7. Watch for small AFK moments at the beginning of the rounds, they are great clues for a hacker. A small, 5-10 seconds of AFK, then the suspect is playing amazing? Then another 5-10 seconds of AFK then the suspect plays normally or just terribly? Yep, I'd have a pretty good idea who that is. That's a hacker trying to confuse the Overwatch inspector. No no no, you ain't gettin' away with that! Don't get confused please, what I mean here is the small AFK moments after the round starts.

8. Watch for the ping. Both the suspect and the enemy. Maybe the suspect has a considerably better internet access than the other team and he is just good at flick-shots and etc. People with lower pings (20 is ideal for the online games) have a huge advantage over the people with high pings (80-100 for measure). Consider the fact that in a local game bots have around 0 while in an online game, their ping is around 5 (as I remember). Just press tab and check the average pings. This might give you a clue.

9. I've recently come accross games where only one player is active and rest of them are just afk. This is to boost that person's rank. It is griefing of a kind, in my opinion. It's unsportsmanly behaviour.

10. This is a huge contribution coming from "Banzaj". Apparently there is an option that you can use while doing an Overwatch mission. This is called as the "Demo Playback Controls". You can use this by pressing the "Shift + F2" buttons on your keyboard. You can speed the game up, slow it down, rewatch a scene and so on. So if you're unsure, just watch it in slow motion, or watch it again.

Do this freaking Overwatch thing people, it takes maximum 10 minutes and one competitive match is between 40-60 minutes so do it a few times a day. You can even learn valuable tactics from good players who were reported but not actually hacking.

Last but not least: If you'd like to translate it to a different language you may do so freely, I, honestly, don't give a damn about it. And remember, the more you like this, the more people will see it. So either copy and paste it, translate it, rate it or just like it.

Let's clean this place up!

And a request from Valve if they want to save their game and its reputation: During Overwatch, let us see the ranks of people and maybe even their play time so that we can at least have a clue whether the suspect can make such a shot. Because come on, I've never seen a Silver getting 3-4 headshots in a row but I've seen many legit and experienced people do it.

PS: F_ U_ C_ K THE HACKERS