Bot?
The very first thing coming into my mind is "gg Gaben"
But for real what the F!!k is this BS?!Banning people cos they have some kind specific usernames? What next? Buying DLC which containing "cat" and "bot" in general name will get you VAC as well?
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I think we should forward this brilliant suggestion to their highly-trained anti-cheat team (just not via Github, VAC-talks there appear to be a bannable crime π)
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Bump and meow. Blast - Gaben has figured out our cunning plan!
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Yes, we'll have to adapt our strategy. Quick, rename!
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Best part is this will only hurt innocent people because the reason why they used to ban accounts for this in the first place (which mind you should have never been a thing in the first place nor is the only time they did it - they did something very similar, just with files not usernames, with CSGO years ago) is no longer relevant :')
Valve never disappoints at showing how many incompetent people apparently work for them.
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I wonder how many real users on linux there is with name of catbot...
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Valve at its best... brilliant
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I've played on a server with bots today, and bots were sending chat messages "if you don't want the bot to shoot at you, add 'catbot' to your name." I guess now I know what that was about.
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Wow, the troublemakers never run out of ideas.... :o
Edit for clarification: still, this SHOULD not work, as the detection is reportedly based on the PC username, not the Steam username. (I wouldn't try it, though)
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Valve confirmed it?
I've received word from the VAC team that this is intentional
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Valve's quote only shows they confirmed the VAC was legit and not a mistake without saying why.
From what I have read Valve never tells what triggers VACs so people cannot evade VACs.
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the issue is that a name will trigger a ban, and the answer is it is intentional. seems pretty clear to me.
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i saw no where that Valve stated the name caused the VAC. again, there policy is not to state exactly why for specific users.
the site lays out reasons like cheating.
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They could just say "it's not that". Clarifying that a username doesn't trigger a ban shouldn't be a trade secret. Only in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that the advanced cheat detection system of a multi-billion game company relies on a blacklist of bad usernames...
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Given how much destruction catbots caused on TF2 a while back, it's completely deserved. I'd assume Valve compared a list of known catbot accounts with a list of Steam accounts queued for VAC bans (remember that VAC bans are delayed to waves to maximise people caught), and they found no normal accounts.
The "one user" who made the issue, has pinned CS:GO cheating tools on GitHub. The guy almost certainly had used catbots, and that's how he found it. Oh, and the next two users also have cheating tools/bot tools for Valve games in their GitHubs...
Found that in the comments section of the article. Haven't checked the validity, though.
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As someone who played TF2 for a long time, I can confirm this shit with the catbots. Bots joining games to cheat and advertise themselves and a Discord server.
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Before you get the pitchforks, search for the catbot username in the community and go down a page or two, then you see that once in a lifetime Valve can be actually right.
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its "catbot" in the pc(system) username, not the steam account username.
that said i think its a pretty shortsighted bandaid fix, all it takes is randomly generated names(or even just occasional changes) and the problem keeps going
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Yup. On a side note, the cheat in question has already been patched not to use that system username anymore (link in the reddit thread), so they won't catch cheaters this way anymore.
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No mater whats the username... They should find a way to fight the actual cheat, cause I guess the cheat itself can easily "evolve" and change the name to "dogbot" and what they will ban anyone with that name who has this name as a username on Linux?
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Just chill, here's an official response https://np.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/7ndjdt/valve_will_vac_ban_you_automatically_for_having/ds2dulw/
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Thanks, post updated. It's nice to finally have a proper answer. It would have been better to have it 3 days earlier.
Funny how they complain about it being "a tactic employed by cheaters to try and sow discord and distrust among anticheat systems" while they are the one who recklessly closed the ticket with improper explanations (and still fail to recognize it, "we support this action" they say). Meanwhile, I had time to read about it in my general IT (non gaming-oriented) news feeds: it would never have gone this far had they replied promptly and accurately in the first place.
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Or users could stop believing everything they read online just because it fits their view of the evil only for profit megacorp Valve is.
But that's how media is these days, some random person's comment on social crap is "news".
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A Valve employee pretty much confirmed that the issue was valid in the original Github ticket, in what appears to have been a very, very misphrased closing comment (quoted in the OP).
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That's exactly why it takes them 3 days to prepare something that's clearly worded and precise, not just respond the on the fly.
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Except that they still did respond on the fly - in the worst possible way might I add. And it doesn't take 3 days to say: "this bug report is inaccurate, we don't ban for system username" +/- "a longer official response will be released tomorrow"
Edit: still, their "carefully crafted official response" isn't much reassuring. They keep repeating that anyone who claims anti-cheat software is spooky is a bloody cheaty criminal. I'll say anyone who claims anti-cheat software is NOT spooky is either clueless on computer security or a liar. Honest anti-cheat developers do recognize the privacy and security concerns raised by anti-cheat software, cf for instance this pretty detailed note by EasyAntiCheat: https://support.easyanticheat.net/kb/privacy/
"Necessary evil" pretty much sums up what anti-cheat software is...
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3 days when it's the weekend + holidays and nobody is at the office? What if I'll file a bug report here saying Valve bans all users not reading Steamgifts and everyone here would think it's obviously true.
Silly games, silly kids cheating in them and silly anti-cheating systems.
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Again, someone did reply.
Also, when you're in a 2 billion internet-related company, you usually have someone from PR on duty (or on call) 24/7. Particularly during one of your 2 yearly sales.
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That's so cute thinking they care or are wasting money to make it better. What next, figure out to rent another server for the sales so it's not down all the time? :)
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Your argument would be sensible if Valve were capable of communication with their users. As it is, Valve almost never says anything about almost every serious issue with Steam, so we have no way to differentiate between some random person's comment which is reporting a real issue and some random person's comment which is reporting a fake issue. There's no Snopes or Politifact for Valve.
Also, "evil only for profit megacorp" is objectively a very accurate description.
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Desktop username.
That's the part that bothers me. The desktop name of a computer user should be no business of Valve's, let alone a foundation for banning.
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It's all fine and dandy, until Valve's threat to ban the user if the discusion continued on Github.
I wonder why? If they are innocent, and nothing was wrong, and the user was indeed a cheater...
Why threaten him?
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They just said, that the issutracker on github is not the appropritiate place to discuss VAC bans and if the discussion doesnt't stop, they will make it stop.
Nothing suspicious there. Will happen here as well, if you spam the support forum with unrealted threads.
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Seems fishy to me. They don't have any power over that forum, and the post doesn't violate any forum rules. They threaten HIM solely, and the threat was a permaban on STEAM, for discussing an issue on other place. Seems like censorship to me. If they don't have anything to hide, why not discuss it?
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In general VAC issues are not handled on Github in any capacity and further issue reports on this may result in being banned from the Valve Software issue trackers.
Where do you get that permaban on steam from?
And thats only what HE said steam wrote to him. So jeha.
Maybe they answered
"You little piece of crap. You cheated and you know it so go f*** yourself and leave us alone or we block you on github".
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No.
An issue tracker is about issues with the games, not whining about VAC bans.
Definitly on steams side here (https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/93c4g/valve-hands-out-vac-bans-for-having-catbot-in-your-linux-username#mc4MC1j).
If you start posting "Why am I not winning stuff." And "Why got I suspended wrongfully." in the Bugs / Suggestions category, you will get banned as well.
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Not if they are banning people for a nickname. That's clearly a bug. They should explain themselves.
If I post a bug that prevent me from winning and get suspended from the forum wrongfully for naming myself konradbot, It's pertinent in that thread.
They responded, three days later saying "It's a lie, It's a cheater, believe us, we are never wrong"
Can't swallow that
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Well. As far as I know we do not know the exact (personal) response valve gave him. We just know what he SAYS the answered him.
Aditionally hes following a guy with these repos:
https://github.com/jingjinghack/linux-csgo-external "CSGO Hack for x64 Linux systems "
https://github.com/jingjinghack/aquaExternal "A linux 64-bit CS:GO π΅π³π’πͺπ―πͺπ―π¨ π΄π°π§π΅πΈπ’π³π¦ "
Jeha, this guy is totally not suspicious at all.
And the guys confirming the ban based on names have
https://github.com/Marc3842h/Fuzion-Hotpatcher "Internal Counter-Strike: Global Offensive linux cheat. Fuzion-Hotpatcher is on the "hotpatch" branch."
as a direct repo...
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You are arguing with someone who's clueless about how GitHub works. Drop it, it will lead to nowhere.
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changed name now lets see if they hit me with illigal ban aswell
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Update: official response from Valve (better late than never):
We already knew Valve had a problem with VAC false positives and not very smart suggestion queue algorithms. Well, this is what happens when stupid algorithms make it into VAC:
It seems one user came across an unfortunate issue playing Team Fortress 2 on Steam, as they were VAC banned for having their Linux desktop username contain "catbot".
This is what Valve replied with:
Source: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-hands-out-vac-bans-for-having-catbot-in-your-linux-username.10968
Edit: and a discussion on the TF2 Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/7ngvxc/valve_will_vac_ban_you_automatically_for_having/
Thread insertion fee
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