Valve officially bans Razer and Wooting's new keyboard feature

Razer and Wooting have certainly stirred up the competitive shooter sector of gaming with new keyboard technology that has now been banned by Valve.

For those that don't know, the above video is a great short explanation of the new technology called Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions (SOCD). Razer added the new feature to its range of Huntsman V3 Pro keyboards last month, which was followed by an update by Wooting. Razer calls its technology Snap Tap, while Wooting calls its technology Snappy Tappy. Use of either of these technologies in Counter-Strike 2 will result in the player being kicked from the match.

At the moment, no account ban appears to be place for violating the rules. It's simply just a match kick. So what does SOCD do? In short, the feature enables players to automate switching strafe directions, which circumvents the skill that is learned by FPS players where switching strafe directions takes skill. For example, to switch strafe directions a player must fully release one key before pressing the other. If both keys are pressed the movement inputs cancel each other out, resulting the character standing still.

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"Recently, some hardware features have blurred the line between manual input and automation, so we've decided to draw a clear line on what is or isn't acceptable in Counter-Strike. We are no longer going to allow automation (via scripting or hardware) that circumvent these core skills and, moving forward, (and initially-exclusively on Valve Official Servers) players suspected of automating multiple player actions from a single game input may be kicked from their match," writes Valve

A good player would have the timing down perfectly to switch strafe directions, which would have likely taken many, many hours to master. The SOCD feature doesn't require a player to fully release a key, meaning players can rapidly tap A or D to counter-strafe without suffering from being forced to stand still. Notably, CS2 has had in place a ban for null keybinds for years, which prevent a player from pressing two opposing directions at the same time.

"We are glad Valve has taken a stance against Snap Tap. Don't use Snappy Tappy (SOCD) or Rappy Snappy in CS2 any more as it will result in a kick," responded Wooting to Valve's ban