Wallhack (from "wall hack," meaning "a hack of the wall") is one of the best-known types of cheats in first-person shooters. The program shows the positions of opponents through walls, smoke, crates, and other obstacles. A player using a wallhack knows where the enemy is before the enemy comes into view, and this gives a huge advantage in any firefight.
How it works
To display a match correctly, the game has to "know" the positions of all participants. The cheat program either obtains this data or changes the way the image is rendered so that players are highlighted on screen through obstacles. Most often this looks like outlines, colored boxes, or silhouettes around opponents. There are also more discreet variants in which only barely noticeable hints appear on screen.
Wallhack belongs to the category of cheat software: it is third-party software that interferes with how the game works. Its use is prohibited by the rules of all competitive platforms and tournaments.
How the word is used
Players and viewers say "he's wallhacking," "caught him on wallhack," "playing through walls." It is abbreviated as "WH." The term is also often applied to merely suspicious behavior: if a player shoots at an enemy behind cover with too much confidence, he may be suspected of cheating. But it is important to distinguish suspicion from proof.
Wallhack and fair play
Not every accurate prediction of an opponent's position is a wallhack. Experienced shooter players know how to:
- locate an enemy by the sound of footsteps, reloading, and other actions;
- count how many opponents are left and guess their likely positions;
- read the situation on the map and understand opponents' typical routes.
These skills are called game sense, and they are completely legal. The line between good game reading and cheating is sometimes hard to see from the outside, so match recordings (demos) and the report system are used to check disputed cases.
How it is fought
Anti-cheat systems, analysis of player behavior, and complaints from other match participants all work against wallhacks. If a violation is confirmed, the account is banned, and on competitive platforms this may cost the player access to ranked matches. At tournaments, the use of cheats usually carries disqualification and sanctions for the entire team.
Wallhack is not the only type of cheat. Alongside it are aimbots, which automatically aim at the enemy, and other programs that give an unfair advantage. But it is the wallhack that most often causes disputes, because it is the hardest to tell apart from genuinely strong play.