[Source Engine] Beat the namehackers! A how-to guide

[Superfly Requiem]

Alright, we all hate them (unless you are them, in which case go away and sit on the naughty step :P) but when we have a namehacker, unless you have reasonable admin experience, you're normally stuck with some moron who you cannot ban, or kick out of risk you ban or kick someone else by accident. This little trick makes use of one console command and a little bit of common sense.

First things first, you will need to enable the developer console. To do this go to options>Advanced... and make sure the Enable Developer Console box is checked. From now on you will be able to access this console using the tilde key (The key with the ¬ symbol on it).

now then, you need to access this console and type "status". Have a text document open and then paste the results into this document, once this is done type in "status" again and paste it in again.

Since Namehacks just "switch" extremely quickly through names, usually by the time you type the second status they have changed their name again. This works to your advantage as from now on all you have to do is find the 2 names that are the same in both lists, and find the one that has the same steam ID.

Lets assume that this is your 2 lists

Bill 123
Bob 321
Steve 111
Pete 222
Pete 333

Bill 123
Bob 321
Steve 111
Pete 222
Bill 333

When we find the names that are the same and then remove the others, we are left with this

Pete 222
Pete 333

Bill 123
Bill 333

Now, you can see that the ID "333" appears in both lists, this means that he is our hacker! To get rid of him for good just type in the console

banid 333

or if you use another admin program, then try and ban the ID through that!

And there we go, we just changed our name hacker from being an unbeatable foe to a minor inconvinience!

Hope this helps!

[Steve]

You should put it on Steam guides... Not that it doesn`t belong here, but more people would get help from this.

[Superfly Requiem]

Never really knew Steam Guides existed, but yeah, ill stick it up there then :P

[Tito Shivan]

It's a pretty known way of guessing which player is a namehacker, bt the more who know it, the better.

There is a problem with few cases where the hack itself spams the 'status' command, so the rest of players cannot request the list themselves. In those cases it's a server admin the one who should do the steps (As the server admin console is not affected)

Another neat trick to report them is to take a screenshot of his killcam when he kills you.
Steam grabs metadata from the pic, and if you upload it, it will 'tag' the cheater's profile, ready for you to report him.