Valve has brought the hammer down on Dota 2 cheaters, with the studio confirming that it has banned over 40,000 accounts that have been caught using third-party software to gain an unfair advantage. The software in question was able to access information used internally by the Dota client that wasn't visible during gameplay, which paved the way for Valve to ban cheaters effective immediately.

Although Valve did not elaborate on what data cheaters exploited via their third-party software, there have been speculations within the community, saying cheaters could be notified when they were within the enemy ward. Some players used the software even at semi-pro levels to take an unfair advantage at the expense of the opposite team.

This resulted in Valve laying a trap to detect cheaters once the technical team figured out the software was working. Shortly after, it decided to remove these accounts from the player base with Dota 2's largest ban wave to date.

RELATED: Valve Quietly Backtracks On The Scope Of Upcoming Team Fortress 2 Update

Cheaters could utilize the data that would never be seen during normal gameplay, giving Valve extremely high confidence that every ban was well-deserved. The developers revealed that they had added a honeypot with a stealth update, a section of data that can be read by someone using third-party cheat software. Due to it remaining secret for normal players, Valve can find if someone utilizes the data for cheating and hacking. They will now fix the underlying issues that made these cheaters possible.

Valve also warned players running any application that reads data from the Dota client, saying their accounts will be banned from playing Dota 2. The company also wanted to make its position clear that cheaters will never be welcome in the Dota player base. Hopefully, this ban wave will reduce the number of cheaters in the game, with Valve assuring players that it will fight against any illegal and unfair actions.

For comparison, Dota 2 has not had many issues with cheaters unlike Valve's other multiplayer game CS: GO, but players have been complaining about more frequent cheats and hacks over the past few months. Valve is aware that some players will continue to develop new exploits, saying: "We will continue to detect and remove these exploits as they come, and continue to ban users who cheat."

NEXT: Ukraine Wants To Ban Sale Of Atomic Heart Due To Russia Links