● cswatch / dispatches
Long-form writing on CS2 anti-cheat, the cheat ecosystem, and what community oversight is actually for. Updated when we have something worth saying.
VAC catches script-kiddies but misses elite cheaters. Here's the technical breakdown of what Valve's anti-cheat sees, what it misses, and why community oversight still matters.
Read article →What experienced Overwatch reviewers actually look for when watching a suspect's demo — pre-aim before sound cue, smooth flick consistency, recoil pattern reset, and the 17 other tells that separate a smurf from a wallhacker.
Read article →External, internal, and DMA cheats explained — how today's paid cheats stay one step ahead of VAC, what trust-factor really tracks, and why hardware-level cheats are the new frontier.
Read article →Account age vs. CS2 hours, friend-network analysis, badge-collection patterns, premier-rating decay, and the other signals that flag a smurf before they ruin your match.
Read article →Analysis of CSWatch's reviewer corpus: which reviewers consistently match the consensus, which over-convict, and the heuristics that distinguish a careful judge from a witch-hunter.
Read article →Inside the reputation algorithm: how ban history, account legitimacy, community reports, and behavioral signals get weighted into one number, and why a score of 30 is a stronger signal than you'd think.
Read article →Valve's ML systems are getting better, but they optimise for false-positive minimisation, not catch-rate. Here's why human community review remains the only reliable backstop against elite cheats.
Read article →Email hello@cswatch.gg with the question. If it's a good one we'll write it up here and link back to you.