How can you tell someone is using an aimbot?

I hear talk about people using aimbots to improve their accuracy but how can you tell someone is using one to report them? Like I played a match today where an enemy Widowmaker was scoring one-shot kills practically nonstop. Now they could have genuinely been a very, very good Widow player but at the same time their aim seemed a little too good at times. What signs should I look for?

Constant headshots, dead-on tracking (if through walls, wallhacks as well), snapping (if you see the cursor move, then that’s not snapping), and basically keeping your team at bay.
Some people try to hide it by turning it off when they don’t need it and on when they do need it so keep an eye out for subtle signs.

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Most blatant aimbots ignore the idea that the cursor even has to take time to reach another location on the screen…

Henceforth if you see ā€œSnappingā€ Then yea, it’s probably an aimbot.

Some great aim can seem like this due to flick shots, though said shots still have to move across the screen no matter how quickly.

The two are very different when observed closely.


That among others such as Perfect aim no matter what’s happening.
being ā€œLockedā€ to a target… but those are pretty obvious.

Here’s a fun video i found involving actual aimbots:


(Ok so that vid only has a few aimbots but it’s still fun. And the starting clip is basically exactly what you’ll ever see if you run into a blatant one)

For some reason some people will try to tell you that ā€œCheating isn’t some exact science, and is very hard to tell when someone is or isn’tā€

What i say to that is… in gaming it IS an exact science.
When you break it down to the basic functions of the game an aimbot works by ā€œattachingā€ the crosshair to visible headshot hitboxes when they are detected on the screen, which bypasses normal laws of what should be possible with any given hardware.

This is rather blatant usually… and easier to spot than some would have you believe. Especially since most cheaters don’t care to hide it.

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The reticle will snap to players heads and stay there tracking them with perfection. When that person is dead, it will snap to another enemies head and track to perfection.

This video gives you an example:

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In my authoritarian fantasy world, aimbot users would be located, round’ up, and hung in a public square with a sign on them that says: Cheaters Die

Wow that was kind of dark! Happy Thanks Giving Everyone!

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Snappy aim that looks unnatural. It is extremely obvious when you see one.
Like snapping to another hero extremely fast, or always shot at a single spot on the screen.

Also to noted that there are some aimbots that have a anti-anti cheat system by toggle themselves off when there are no shots in the chamber, and then toggle themselves on after finish reloading, making them looks innocent on the killcam.

However, killcams are very unreliable, cause you are seeing what the server see, not what the player that killed you see, which could make a lot of differences.

Oh man, that’s bad.

Most aimbots aren’t that blatant.

Most aimbots aren’t nearly as obvious as what AWESOME showed, but one great tell-tale sign is if they are tracking your head at all times, and are snapping.

The reduced killcam tickrate makes it hard to distinguish flicking from instant snaps. Easiest way to tell is that every single headshot passes perfectly through the head hitbox(err… cube, this is 3D space) at the exact same point in the center of the solid. Humans lock onto the head, not the exact center of the critbox.

Nah, you see… you people are pretty hurtful.

The player featured in this video just has a gaming chair.

Pretty self explanatory.

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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. Some people just have a really good gaming chair

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A gaming chair? You talking about a physical chair or something else?

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The blatant ones are easy. But–and this is probably your question–the good ones are really hard to tell. Basically impossible without being Blizzard and having extra info.

There’s one that’s been around since the start of OW with reportedly no detects/bans yet. I won’t name names, because that is advertising and wrong… but the humanised aimbot in this cheat suite basically looks exactly like human aim. I.e. with zero user interaction (toggling on and off cheats, manual aim)–ZERO–the aimbot will selectively miss to various degrees. I’ve noticed one (and only one) difference: for very large camera swings the aimbot will respond somewhat slower and smoother than real human aim.

So, more of the story I guess for trying to ā€œdeduceā€ aimbots by inspection:

  • if it’s blatantly cursor locking… yeah it’s an aimbot (duh)
  • however if it looks too normal/smooth… it might also be an aimbot

Kind of like how if you ask humans to ā€œsimulateā€ a Win/Loss RNG coin toss, they usually fail to include streaks of wins and losses… Authentic aim should come and go in streaks of perfection and occasional bad errors, and not be 100% consistent/smooth with marginal/no error.

That said, if it is questionable… best to note that you aren’t really sure in your report–if you still choose to file!

inhuman snapping onto heads, watch the killcam and see if their reticle slightly goes ā€˜past’ your head or instantly dead stop right on it.

Tracking you thru walls without infrasight/sonar arrow

PFFT Obviously we’re talking about only the finest of upholstered seats meant only for the extreme experience of virtual mental combat.

Only THEN Can you transcend reality and become an owl player.

Or ya know… scream into a mic and beat your poor over cluttered desk into submission before choosing the right three letter name, for good marketing.

(Shrug)

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Sometimes you can’t tell if they’re really subtle about it, but other times they slip up and you can see a snap.

For example:

First shot on Genji is legit, second shot on Zen was probably aimbot but looked legit enough, but then he slips up and holds the aim key too long which snaps onto zen and reveals the aimbot.

Other times aimbots have a weird jittering to them, but that can also be confused with twitchy camera movement from low framerate.

Sometimes you can see aimbots switch between targets unnaturally during hectic teamfights.

And then other times it’s so blatant that you don’t even need to think about it such as this

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XQC got banned because of his gaming chair

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Here are examples of an aimbot that I caught, reported and confirmed they were banned last year;

A very blatent instant-snap to the next target (even thou the player was not in Line of Sight) at the 15 second mark.

And the POTG replay showing target tracking

I have made hacks before and tested out hacks for this game. Widow is the hardest hero to detect a hack on because by nature a good widow can flick shot. Hacks do this too. The best way to determine if a widow is hacking is to look for two things.

  1. the widow is suspicious by playing well above her rank always making headshots and not bodyshots no matter how much you move around.
  2. the hack flick mechanic will stick on the target, so if she flicks striaght to the headshot then deliberty pulls away as fast and far away as possible, this is to break the stick mechanic in the hack.