Hiko is convinced VALORANT does one thing better than CS2

Valve is struggling with numerous Counter-Strike 2 issues. One of the main ones is cheating, and former CS:GO pro Hiko is certain Riot Games does a way better job in that regard than CS2 developers.

During his latest stream on Nov. 15, Hiko encountered a blatant cheater in one of his games. Afterward, he sparked the discussion about CS2’s cheating problems, and how they compare to Riot and VALORANT specifically. The former North American pro has no doubt when it comes to which game handles this issue better—VALORANT.

“When Riot first came out [with VALORANT] and they said that they have a kernel-level anti-cheat, people hated Riot for it. ‘Oh, it’s a Chinese company, they’re spying on our computer, oh, they shouldn’t have access to our computer.’ Bro, I don’t play against many hackers in VALORANT at the highest rank. Whereas in the highest rank in this game [CS2], everybody complains [about cheaters],” Hiko said.

Those who tend to play both CS2 and VALORANT should know where Hiko’s coming from. Personally, we couldn’t agree more. While playing Valve’s newest title since it was released by the end of September, it feels like there’s a cheater in every second game in the Premier mode, especially in the higher ranks, as Hiko pointed out. This isn’t such a big issue in Riot’s FPS, where the anti-cheat does a solid job of hunting down cheaters and banning them.

This is likely due to the kernel-level access anti-cheat that Riot incorporated into VALORANT, which indeed gathered tons of negative feedback initially. Kernel-level access software is much more intrusive in regards to your system, which was a major complaint back in the day. But, as criticized as it was, it seems to be working so far.

Sadly, CS2 players can’t say the same about Valve’s anti-cheat, at least for now. Hackers always have been a major issue in Counter-Strike, and they’re running rampant especially in CS2, making the Premier mode practically unplayable. In the same stream, Hiko claimed if cheaters would magically disappear from the game, it would be actually really fun, regardless of its other problems. But, it’s a dream that probably will never come true.