Deadlock players reportedly perma-banned already for abusing pauses

Valve has reportedly started handing permanent bans out to anyone found to be abusing Deadlock’s pause feature.

The MOBA, which remains in Closed Alpha, allows players to universally pause a match for 20 seconds. The system’s intended use is to account for situations where teammates disconnect or leave, allowing time for the empty slot to be refilled.

Footage of Twitch streamer ohnePixel discovering the function and then encouraging others to “take their pause” to “tilt the enemy team” has already emerged online. Others have attributed their total account bans to misuse of the feature.

How accurate these claims are isn’t clear. The ban notice seen below doesn’t specify the reasons for a teammate’s permanent ban. Nevertheless, a heavily upvoted thread on Reddit discussing the development prompted many to share their own experiences.

“Had a close match the other night that ended up with the other team winning. They continually paused it for about five minutes during the Weakened Patron phase while we were wiped,” one fan explained.

Similar anecdotes of misuse were present, “In one of my games we were stomped. Already not fun but the winning team took turns pausing and unpausing as they killed our Patron,” another added.

Others suggested that the behavior could have an innocent explanation. “I have some friends who play League of Legends. They regularly hit P [to pause] when trying to open the shop due to muscle memory. I had them change their shop button so it didn’t happen.”

Pause features are commonplace in MOBAs. Valve’s own Dota 2 has such a feature, though as is the case for any title still in development, how Deadlock functions could change dramatically before launch.

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