Do you really think people deserve not even 1% chance for forgiveness?
To put things into perspective it maybe a good idea to tell why VAC bans are permanent.
I'm 14 years on Steam and I know that in the beginning VAC was really a temporary ban that could be lifted as easy as sending a ticket to Steam support. But after a while Steam support was noticing that mostly the same users were asking to lift their VAC ban again and again. In other words when their ban was lifted they started cheating again and again. And that's the very reason why VAC bans are now permanent.
So a big kudos to cheaters of days gone by for ruining it for today's cheaters!
Also cheaters are a real problem on Steam and most people don't like cheaters.
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Also cheaters are a real problem on Steam
Wow, that is a crazy spike. Do you think it is mainly from PUBG since it came out Dec 2017?
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Actually, a few months back they bought 1,700 computers to work non-stop to ban cheaters in CS:GO > https://www.pcgamer.com/vacnet-csgo/ .
That was like 2-3 years in the making. We're seeing the results just now. I'm glad they finally listened and did something to proactively stop cheaters... it was about guddarn time!
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it would make sense for pubg to cause that they actually havent been banning cheaters because of the way there game works more cheaters means more loot boxes which means more community market sales its pretty awful and im surprised valve hasnt done anything pubg only occasionally bans cheaters to make it look like they are doing something but they do it so infrequently its still profitable for the cheater to buy a new copy and cheat
also kind of sad pubg devs dropped the lawsuit against epic games i would have loved to see them lose the engine rights and thus the game
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Wow...over 100 000 accounts get a VAC ban every month. Had no idea it was that bad.
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So many hacked accounts, roommates and little brothers out there...
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:-D .... yea the "little brother" thing is always a running gag...... and very bad that you hear that story in 90% of the cases...
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what is very bad, is when its true xD beware the big brother wrath
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The thing with VAC bans is that most of those that got one or more VAC bans say that they didn't cheat and someone else was playing on their account or that they got hacked. :O
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I know that very well.
I am online since 26 years and since that time i hear the "little brother/good friend" story and i know exactly ONE case that really involved a little brother that made shit with the account of the older brother.
All others were only to bad for playing without cheating/hack/exploit AND to dumb that they don't catched by it :-D evil lauhghing
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Stand behind your actions and take responsibility for them. Yes, that includes the negative ones.
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Felons, sex offenders, etc. are literally on a permanent list after serving their prison sentence.
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Nice shifting, there. You were the one who compared it to prison.
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Well, you edited it.
I think you are confused on what you're trying to compare, here. You say that prisons don't punish you for small offenses. Yet, you cannot be in prison for a small offense. You directly contradict yourself, while all I did was correct your wrong assumption. If you have served a prison sentence, you are in fact on a list as mentioned. So again, not sure what you're trying to say. The strawman regarding US justice is another topic altogether and not relevant.
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YOU started to compare it to rapist, sex offenders etc.... not everyone in prison is there for beeing a felon!
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But they don't have to wear a badge stating they're on this list, unlike people who got VAC banned. It's pretty hard to leave a criminal life behind when you're branded as a criminal everywhere you go.
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In the U.S., they effectively DO wear a badge stating they're on this list. For any DECENT job (and more than a few lousy ones) a background check is performed on the person before they're hired. If they've committed a felony, they're VERY unlikely to be hired.
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Are you just saying that the list is publically available to any potential employers, or that they literally have to wear a badge stating they're criminals? Because if it's the second option that's pretty fucked up :/
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Define "publicly available." Someone can find out if you've been convicted of a crime, and in some cases even if you've been ACCUSED of a crime by paying to have a background check done on them. There are companies dedicated to this sort of thing, once upon a time you'd have had to hire a private detective, nowadays it's a web-click away.
One thing that's FAR EASIER to determine is if someone has committed a crime that classifies them as a sexual offender. Rape, child molestation, exposing yourself, etc. They aren't allowed to live close to schools or playgrounds in most parts of the country.
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Small offenses generally don't get jailtime. Large offenses can get sentences that effectively make prison their life.
It's a bad example because banning from VAC-protected servers doesn't remove your liberty or effect your life any more than say, getting a blacklisted from all bars in city because you were caught after a long series of breaking rules and ruining it for all other patrons. Even if you insist you've mended your ways years later, you still knowingly chose to shit on the idea of base respect and ruin the experience of others for your own benefit. There's no reason anyone should give them the benefit of the doubt and risk they doing it again and going for another long stretch of not getting caught at everyone elses expense.
Yeah, people sometimes deserve second chances, but it isn't just one person giving the benefit of the doubt and paying the price if they were too trusting, it's a whole community who face a constant and ongoing issue with the thing that we're supposed to trust on. It's not like they can't just suck it up and pay the fee of a new, unbanned game license on a fresh account.
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That's what we get for letting our digital world fall into the hands of a few centralized big brothers. Companies couldn't pull that kind of crap if there was a healthy competition.
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if you get banned from PUBG you can always cheat on Fortnite
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You say it like keeping cheaters banned is a bad thing.
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Keeping cheaters banned and tagged for life is certainly too much (not to mention the false positives). With a healthy competition we'd probable see a model where they're banned for a reasonable period of time. Something like, maybe a year or 2, which in Internet time is already a small eternity.
Also, I don't want to live in China and what Valve is doing now furiously looks like a first step in the wrong direction:
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There doesn't need to be 'healthy competition' on handling cheaters. Again, starting a fresh account and buying a new copy lets you back in, and I think that's a small price to pay for deliberately wrecking other peoples experience of the game for your own whims.
And being blacklisted from online games for cheating is a far cry from jail time. Letting cheaters back in and cheaters getting jailtime are two ultimately unrelated things. Forgiving cheaters won't prevent lawmakers from randomly and magically adopting those policies on their own whims. Valve won't randomly adopt chinese political law stances on reporting cheaters to the authority for jailtime, just because it exists somewhere in the world. This is more a matter of paranoia, and is a weak argument for allowing people to circumvent lasting repercussion on an official level. :P
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cheating should be punished but public shaming is childish and stupid, especially with a system that will never be 100% reliable.
those "vac" tags should be only visible to valve and to the user, or at least say to which game/s they apply.
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I don't see it as public shaming. I see it as more of a warning for other players. I wouldn't want to play with someone that had recent or multiple VAC bans. You still have to find their profile to see they have a VAC ban.
It's not like they publicly post lists or make announcements of all the people that have VAC bans do they? That would be more in line with public shaming. Just my opinion.
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One VAC ban 5 years ago isn't exactly what I'd call "recent" or "multiple", yet it's still displayed on OP's profile :/
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I wasn't referring to the permanent display of the VAC ban, but my ability to see it and make a judgement of whether I would want to play with them or not.
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the vac tag is public and it solves nothing at all. cheaters will keep cheating, and even more if they test scripts in that account (since it's already marked, just keep using it in other games to do whatever you want... it can't get worse).
it only forces people with money to create a new account and buy games again if they want to be left alone to avoid being harassed by self-righteous idiots that can't let it go. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Cheating should be punished with jail time. Minors' parents should get huge fines. The end.
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I don't agree that it should be punishable with jail time, but it should be punishable with fines.
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Because cheating in a game is an actual violation of someone else's rights that warrants physical isolation from society for society's safety.
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They should be court-martialed, shot, and sent to the Russian Front!
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That is where we are heading in the crazy world we live in: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/19wSk/happy-vac-day-everyone#Qz2JqtM
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Only about 600 days until it won't show on your profile anymore (but still be there)
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so it stop being showed on the profile after that time?
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In my opinion if someone is publicly labeled as a cheater then the evidence should be posted and displayed with the title so if there is a mistake or its false the public can ignore the title, or the accused can at least defend his name. Cheaters however in my opinion deserve a lengthy if not permanent ban. There's plenty of games that can be played solo and have fun in while breaking the limits. People in multi-player are trying to enjoy a fair and competitive space.
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My humble opinion is that any cheater damn well knew what they were getting into. Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. Do they deserve forgiveness? Sure. Do they deserve getting unbanned eventually? No, not really. If you do stupid shit and get burnt, you can't get rid of the burn because you regret doing it. Shouldn't have played with fire in the first place.
The reason VAC is so harsh is probably because the harshness will discourage potential cheaters from risking tarnishing their Steam account forever. If there was a chance to bet unbanned, there would be far more users trying their luck.
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Except not really because nothing stops you from just starting a new account except financial investment. And VAC doesn't ban you from everything it just bans you from a family of titles.
It's branding fixable by expensive surgery not imprisonment.
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Imprisonment is a total isolation from society for the safety of that society. A total account ban would be akin to that.
VAC ban status just prohibits you from playing certain titles. It's ostracization and prohibition, not isolation.
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Punishment for pointlessly ruining others public activity for your own whims isn't supposed to be a positive thing for the offender, DeadXecuter. And what it sounds like ultimately depends on how you're letting yourself read into the matter. Going on 'sounds' is notoriously unreliable, hence why it's better to stick to what is more measurable.
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VAC has been known to trigger false positives. And it's easy to get new accounts to bypass them. Devs seem to have totally abandoned private servers so there's no real solution to the cheating problem.
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Vac is too little for cheating ,i would like to see where they live...
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Even though I've been pissed by cheaters in the past, I think those who get so hateful towards cheaters should take a step back and look at the priorities in their life. "it's only a game" is something we've all heard, and is usually more annoying than calming, but still it is indeed only a game and there are better reasons, if any, to start up a lynch mob.
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That real world for ya, you did something wrong, and it sticks on your forehead till you die, live it up and be better.
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My suggestion is a ban per game, for maybe 1 year. If you get banned again in the same game, you get permanently banned from that game. Get banned three times (no matter if it's three first bans from three games or if you have a permanent game ban and then cheat in another game) and you will get permanently banned from all games (basically the VAC of today) since you're a repeat offender.
However, I can accept the current system (probably because I don't cheat in multiplayer games and never have) but really think it should say which game you got banned for and possibly also what you did.
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I do believe VAC bans should be permanent. Everyone knows the consequence for cheating.
I do however think that red VAC label on offenders profile is a little over the top. It's quite literally a scarlet letter. Public shaming? Come on now, this isn't 17th century Massachusetts. I think not being able to play VAC-protected games is punishment enough.
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Given the existence of false positives, no matter how unlikely they can be, it would be nice to have a brief note of what triggered the ban (game, offense, detection method, observation length, etc). That data would probably be meaningless to the layman but it might provide some small metric for potential false-positive victims to underline their innocence to others. Hmm, or it would just provide a foothold for people who are guilty as sin to blag their way under a false halo...
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I used to worry about getting a false positive myself, but I really don't think they actually happen without being lifted within a few weeks. Of course it's hard to verify otherwise because 99% of people who get a legit VAC ban will say "I no use cheats, why I get ban ?!!!" making it impossible to figure out who is truthful.
Now, a short message on why the ban occurred would be nice for certain people. But if those existed, they could possibly help cheaters pinpoint what part of the cheat is triggering VAC. That would be no good for anyone.
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Good point.
There really is no easy way around the cheat vs anticheat arms-race, and of course there are tons of people claiming absolute innocence. It's funny because there was one guy back in APB:Reloaded who openly said in global chat that he was hacking and nothing would be done about it, and I got video of him doing suspicious stuff on one of my alt characters. I remember him then complaining about 'being one of the false positives' as part of a banwave with lots of other people cursing the owners of the game. Part of my report along with the video footage was also an account on a cheat website I literally found with a little googling, which had a direct reference to them that I can't remember the exact details of, but I'm pretty sure it was just their username on the cheat site. They were saying how the cheat works perfectly and they 'only' use it to assist them by setting a certain sensitivity to 0.1. They rerolled a fresh account and had a marginally different username, and when I laughed at them in the district chat, they gave me a private message to claim their innocence "Just because I said it doesn't mean it was real", and also to boast about how the ban didn't stop them as they used an alt-account to somehow transfer a lot of stuff, after the fact, which didn't really track, but w/e).
People are... weird.
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You think branding them with a label is bad, what about actual real world jail time? That's crazy. https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/19wSk/happy-vac-day-everyone#Qz2JqtM
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You cheated, didn't you? u deserve the VAC on ur profile and on ur alts. once a cheater always a cheater.
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True! It's the same thing that happens in relationships, when a person cheats, she/he will continue to do it
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VAC ban should disappear after 1000 days.. xd
i once got reprimanded from steam for using Idle Master, CS GO was like: You being doing naughty things, whatever it is stop it or get VAC banned.
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It stops showing after 2000, but you are still actually banned. Also yea no, you aren't gonna get VAC banned just because of idle master. What you got was a VAC kick that has nothing really to do with a VAC ban and you could get a billion of them and still not get banned. Source: have been VAC kicked to many times to count.
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Just imagine the future when instead of being banned from playing the game, you will go to jail. We are living in scary times.
- It started as an April fools joke: https://www.nextlevelgamer.com/counter-strike/video-game-hackers-face-10-years-in-jail
- South Korea passed laws in 2016 that include up to 5 years in jail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4041362/Video-gamers-cheat-playing-online-face-FIVE-YEARS-PRISON-new-laws-South-Korea.html
- 13 players arrested in SK: https://www.nerdmuch.com/games/153331/13-overwatch-hackers-arrested-south-korea/
- 120 arrested in China, some sent to jail: https://www.usgamer.net/articles/china-cracking-down-on-pubg-cheaters-with-arrests-jail-time
- Even a lawsuit in the US: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/27/16707562/epic-games-fortnite-cheating-lawsuit-debate-14-year-old-kid
I don't know how far this goes, there probably has been more arrests. This is just the first few results I found from a quick google search. I don't mind banning cheaters from playing, but I do not agree at all with arresting them, that is crazy.
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For those who do it habitually, I think cheating is the game. Maybe a better answer would be to ban them all to special "cheater servers" and let them duke it out among themselves, leaving the rest of us in peace. I realize that's probably impractical for any number of reasons that I am not aware of, but still it might make everyone happier.
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I know a couple of games have done this, Titanfall and Max Payne 3 come to mind. It honestly seems like the best solution; the cheaters still get to play, but the rest of us don't have to play with them.
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So not as problematic as I first assumed. It's a win for the game companies too - they not only get to keep the cheater customers, but are able to attract more new non-cheater customers that they would otherwise have lost due to lack of confidence in quality of gameplay.
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Dont cheat so you dont get banned ...
Cheaters are ruining the game for pretty much everyone involved , so perm ban seems like fitting punishment .
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I hate cheaters. They ruin the gaming experience of other players and for that I have no problem with harsh punishment. That being said. I do believe people can learn a lesson and better themselves.
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It really must be someone or something very cheap and sour to like and not condemn cheaters and indeed they ruin the gaming experience for a lot of non cheating players so we agree for the most but out of my experiences being a long time gamer and being 14 years on Steam is that not all but most cheaters are beyond saving aka they just keep on cheating because it's so easy to make a new Steam account and cheat again. :X
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I only play singleplayer games, so selfishly I do not care :o)
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I would be curious how a system would work that would actively ban you for 1-2 years, but then stay there as a "badge" without an active effect. Just as a reminder. But I have no personal connection to these systems, I never cheated in games where it had actualy consequences ( only in single player games, cheats, file edits, etc. I stay behind my decisions regarding these, but I don't know how I would think if I would actually be marked for them...likely nothing, if it would just a tag, and not a ban like VAC)
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Being a long time host of certain multiplayer servers I understand the permanent vac ban, In most cases cheaters don't learn from their mistake. In fact, in many cases they don't even see what they are doing is wrong. They just get angry and say you are a bad admin or they give you DDoS and death threats.
However I give about half a year bans for cheating. I still hope people can change...
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Hey guys.
It's been 1666 days since my last VAC ban and thank god for teaching me a lesson that I've never forgot.
In my opinion, even guys that don't go around cheating for a long time deserve redemption and forgiveness.
Well it is one thing to cheat and ruin other's game and get punished for it, but permanently?really?
Share your opinion and include your VAC cooldown if you like.I always like to know if someone has older VAC ban.
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