By Lola at Monday, July 23, 2018 11:02:00 AM

Last year, just after the Steam Summer Sale ended, Valve banned over 40 000 Steam accounts. This year, Valve repeated the exercise, but the amount of accounts banned in a single day is almost double that of the previous year.

The Steam Summer Sale ended on July 5, with the usual daily banning quota averaging around 2000 VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) bans per day. Then, on July 19, Valve issued a staggering 61 437 VAC bans and 37 403 Game Bans. Currently, for July, the total number of VAC bans is standing at 121 946 (Game Bans 428 360), and we still have ten days to go.

Last year's total VAC bans ended at 148 132, so it will be interesting to see where we stand at the end of this month. Steam DB keeps tracks of all the VAC and Game Bans issued by Valve.

A possible explanation for the hike in bans must be that people buy games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on the Steam sale, and are then caught cheating. A VAC ban is permanent, non-negotiable, and cannot be reversed. According to a post on the subreddit VAC_PORN, one cheater lost "easily $30k" worth of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins. That is an insane amount of money to spend on a video game, not to mention risk losing it because of cheating.

How does Steam's VAC-ban system work?

"VAC stands for Valve Anti-Cheat, an automated system designed to detect cheats installed on users' computers. If a user connects to a VAC-Secured server from a computer with identifiable cheats installed, the VAC system will ban the user from playing that game on VAC-Secured servers in the future. The VAC system reliably detects cheats using their cheat signatures.

Any third-party modifications to a game designed to give one player an advantage over another is classified as a cheat or hack and will trigger a VAC ban," explains the official VAC page on Steam. "This includes modifications to a game's core executable files and dynamic link libraries. While server admins may choose to ban specific players, server admins cannot VAC ban players."



Using chat programs like X-Fire or Overwolf, won't get you VAC-banned, and neither will your system hardware configurations. Steam's VAC-ban patrols games like CS: GO, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Ark Survival, and other online games.

So far, the highest VAC-ban month of 2018 was March which saw almost 190 000 accounts banned, and happened after the Steam Lunar Sale that ended in February.

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