Wallhack

The purpose of this article is to better understand what a “wall hack” or “wallhacks” are to the esport and gaming community. The reason to do is because there are many different definitions out there which cover other ways to cheat that get mistaken for a wall hack. To begin, for this article and for consistency, wall hacks will be spelt this way.  A wall hack cheat comes under a category of cheating known as an “Extra Sensory Perception” (ESP) cheat.[1] ESP cheats as described by Zhao et al are “cheats that involve illicitly obtaining visual information to gain an unfair advantage over normal players”.

Many researchers have provided their interpretation of what a wall hack is. Beginning with Yan and Randell, wall hack is defined as “a player can cheat by modifying the client infrastructure such as device drivers in his operating system. [2] For example, he can modify a graphics driver to make a wall transparent so that he can see through the wall, locating other players who are supposed to be hidden behind the wall”. Martinson and Rangel define a wall hack simply as, “revealing enemy positions through walls and other objects”. [3]

Next, Pontiroli defined wallhacks as, “in which the player is able to see opponents through walls, exhibiting god-like abilities simply by having more information to hand than other players”.[4] Finally, Yahyavi and Kemme describe a wall hack as, “a player can exploit information available but not supposed to be disclosed (e.g., position of players behind walls) to increase his chances to kill other players or to foresee danger, thus helping him evade. This can occur as players might receive state updates or guidance messages about players that are not currently in their vision range”.[5]

In short, a wallhack grants the user more information than is available from the base game. Said information provides a tactical advantage over the opposing team by anticipating movements which promotes unfair and unethical competition that affects the integrity and spirit of sport.

How these occur can happen in multiple ways, but they are used to exploit weaknesses the hackers have identified in the online game server. The most common type of a wall hack is when a player can see through walls or objects which are not normally possible e.g. floors of an apartment or the walls to the neighbouring room. These walls either become semi-transparent so you can see through them granting the player more information than is allowed or reveal position information of the opposing players making them visible hence seeing through the walls.[6]

From this we can separate wallhacks into two distinct categories.

1. Visual Manipulation: When the hacker modifies their graphics drive to grant access to see enemy players not granted by the games rules and coding.
2. Exploiting Data Packets: This is when the player illegally obtains access to the server and acquires data that is not possible to reveal additional information. 

There have been many examples of players being caught using wall hacks across many different esport titles and tournaments. These include,

1. Jonathan Kosmala or “JonnyK” who was a Fortnite player on Team Kaliber who was caught cheating during the Fortnite World Cup qualifers (2019). He was caught when a cheat creator gave Jonathan up to the game hosts and Jonathan was kicked from the team. The tournament he was competing in had a prize pool of US$ 30 million which shows the temptation some players will use cheats to win these tournaments.[7]
2. “Mingostylegaming” was caught using a wall hack on his live stream during the 2v2 Call of Duty Warzone CMG tournament in 2020 and viewers spotting a tab of a popular website showing cheats.[8]  
3. Abhay Urkude (“Xhade”) an Indian pro esport player for Paratroops team was caught using wall hacks in Valorant. He initially denied the claims but after other pro players from the community confronted him he admitted to cheating. He was then subsequently disqualified from the esports club (TEC) invitational.[9]

These cheats are used to exploit weaknesses in the game servers for players to win matches unfairly. These hacks will provide the cheater with additional information such as opposing teams positions, where they are moving too, predict future movements and see through objects. Despite showing multiple examples of players being caught using these cheats thanks to anti-cheat software, other viewers on the players streams and fellow pro players.

There is no evidence to suggest that cheating will slow down or stop in esports especially when huge prize pools are available to tempt players to cheat their way to winning. In summary, wall hacks are one of many ways people can cheat in online video games to gain an unfair advantage which will disrupt the competitive experience of esports. The short article has shown the different definitions that can describe a wallhack, the two main types of wall hacks out there and multiple examples of players being caught using said hacks.

[1] 1 S Zhao and others, ‘VESPA: A General System for Vision-Based Extrasensory Perception Anti-Cheating in Online FPS Games’ (2023) IEEE Transactions on Games.

[2]  J Yan and B Randell, ‘A systematic classification of cheating in online games’ (2005) In Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games (pp. 1-9), 3.

[3]  F Martinson and D Rangel, ‘A Comprehensive Analysis of Game Hacking through Injectors: Exploits, Defenses and Beyond’ (2023) 975 International Journal of Computer Applications 8887, 8888.

[4]  S Pontiroli, ‘The cake is a lie! Uncovering the secret world of malware-like cheats in video games’ (2019) In Virus Bulletin Conference, p. 7.

[5]  A Yahyavi and B Kemme, ‘Peer-to-peer architectures for massively multiplayer online games: A survey’ (2013)46(1) ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 1-51.

[6] E Wendel, ‘Cheating in online games: a case study of bots and bot-detection in browser-based multiplayer games’ (Master’s thesis, Institutt for telematikk, 2012), 35.

[7]  E Chen, ‘Team Kaliber Fortnite pro kicked for attempting to cheat in World Cup’ (Daily Upcomer, 2019) <https://daily.upcomer.com/team-kaliber-fortnite-pro-kicked-attempting-cheat-world-cup/>  accessed 8 March 2025;  R Valentine, ‘Fortnite cheat maker exposes professional player cheating in World Cup’ (gamesindustry.biz, 2019) <www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-16-fortnite-cheat-maker-exposes-professional-player-cheating-in-world-cup> accessed 8 March 2025.

[8] GG Recon, ‘Warzone Player ‘exposes himself cheating during tournament’ (2020) <https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/warzone-player-exposes-himself-cheating-during-tournament/> accessed 8 March 2025.

[9] AFK Gaming, ‘Indian valorant pro admits to cheating’ (2021) <https://afkgaming.com/esports/news/6511-indian-valorant-pro-admits-to-cheating> accessed 8 March 2025.