Research paper shows CS2 has worst anti-cheat among popular FPS games

According to a research paper from CheckMATE '24, CS2 has the least effective anti-cheat among popular first-person shooters.

From a paper written at the end of 2024, four British university students looked into the effectiveness of the anti-cheat in the most-played FPS games.

Counter-Strike ranked near the bottom, only performing better than Battlefield 1, while having a much higher average player count. The Valve shooter ranks behind Fortnite, VALORANT, Rainbow 6, and Overwatch 2, to name a few.

"This paper studies game cheats as one of the most widespread forms of man-at-the-end (MATE) attacks," the paper's abstract reads. "We analyse 80 representative web sites selling game cheats, finding an active market, with cheats selling for up to hundreds of dollars a month. We conservatively estimate the combined revenue from selling these MATE attacks to range between $12.8M and $73.2M annually."

Valve has long been criticized for the ineffectiveness of their anti-cheat since the CS:GO days. The Counter-Strike community hoped that CS2 would do a better job at preventing and banning cheaters, however, the sentiment remains that little has been done.

This year, pros such as Martin "STYKO" Styk and Adam "friberg" Friberg complained about the state of Premier, which is CS2's most popular option for competitive matchmaking.

The paper can be found in its entirety here.