Thread: Major VAC Ban Wave

I agree that cheaters need to be banned. But they have to be careful to keep legitimate modders from being banned. This game wouldn't exist without someone hacking the game and pushing the boundaries...the original CS, Natural Selection, Portal,DoD, Red Orchestra, and Killing Floor all started as mods. There are probably a lot more than that that I'm not aware of too. I know Valve recognizes this, but it is still important to keep in mind.

Honestly I'm leary about this. I'm of the camp what if someone innocent gets caught in this? Imagine having $500+ of games on account then Steam closing it? Am I understanding this right? Yeah cheating and hacking sucks, thats why admins are needed.

You are right. I have no beef with modders obviously, but the 12 year old kiddies who bought their hacks for $29.99 like the ones I dealt with today... "I've got 20 more accounts" was the last thing I heard him say. Just pisses me the fuck off. And you know a lot of people end up buying hacks just so they can deal with hackers in their own "justice". If I didnt have any morals id do the same.

Originally Posted by maximusboomus

Honestly I'm leary about this. I'm of the camp what if someone innocent gets caught in this? Imagine having $500+ of games on account then Steam closing it? Am I understanding this right? Yeah cheating and hacking sucks, thats why admins are needed.

At TPG, we subscribe to the philosophy "once a cheater, always a cheater". In the banned forum I notice that suspected cheaters who appeal a ban are routinely checked to see if they are related to any banned-due-to-cheating incidents on other servers or platforms and that is used as evidence in admin votes. Cross-account banning is supposed to help automatically resolve such links in the Steam/VAC system (I think they probably use a system cookie derived during the logon process and check for different account logons from the same system).

Originally Posted by [CoFR]SirMoo

The problem is we're not talking about amateur mods. You can play with any modification any non-VAC-enabled server at any time. VAC bans are around because cheats make true competitive play impossible and CS has become an esport and clan/server rankings are therefore important to the community. Cheating reduces the value of any skill metric in the game and makes things like "Global Elite" meaningless if everybody in that tier only got there by cheating.

That's not entirely true. I know several people that have been VAC banned for mods. Just as an example, there were quite a few people that got VAC banned for modding Dungeon Defenders. I know people that have been VAC banned in Shogun Total War and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic for mods as well. IIRC we had a long time member here get banned in the Dungeon Defenders sweep...that's particularly galling because VAC is enabled on all servers, open or closed net. I believe that the same was true for Dark Messiah...I've never played Shogun to know.

Insane was indeed VAC'ed in DD. The profile in the first post claims he was banned for using Steam Achievement Manager, and he said you can't get VAC'ed for using it. However, there's a disclaimer that says if you use SAM on a VAC enabled server, you''ll be VAC banned.


When insane was banned, he said he didn't realize DD was a VAC protected game.

Originally Posted by maximusboomus

Imagine having $500+ of games on account then Steam closing it? Am I understanding this right?

No, you are mistaken. Bans occur on a per-game or per-engine basis (depending on the game and engine) and only affect that game and its market (if it has one). It just gives you a scarlet letter on your account for all to see, but you can play other games normally.

To add to what Madmax said, it's very rare for Valve to completely lock or close a Steam account. It's happened, but again it's rare.

Modders (and the modding community) are also aware of what to mod and what not to mod in terms of textures and core game files.

Insane pulled a "doh!" He has a VAC, but I don't put him in the same camp as waller/aimbot/etc.