Who is responsible for your VACban?
There all shitty excuses, doesn't matter who did it, its your account and your responsibility. As account sharing is explicitly mentioned as not allowed by Valve a VAC ban is really just a slap on the wrist compared to what they could get.
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a slap on the wrist? a VAC ban is something you will suffer from for the whole lifespan of your account. it's a mark that never goes away. that is pretty significant. and the fact that false positives are possible makes me very skeptical about the system.
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In those circumstances yes. Account share isn't allowed. If you blame someone else for cheating on your account you're admitting that said cheating did in fact happen and that you are also account sharing. The SSA explicitly states that your account can be terminated immediately and without notice for account sharing.
A VAC ban in a single game would be nothing more than a slap on the wrist compared to losing my entire library.
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Account share isn't allowed.
sure it is! it's called Family Sharing. and as i recently heard, if you share your library to one of your family members or friends, and this person cheats and gets banned - you get banned, too. and then you're marked as cheater for life. even in 20 years (assuming Steam still exists then), your profile page will say you're a dirty cheater, and people will treat you accordingly. does that sound fair to you?
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As I've replied to other users. Family Library Sharing and account sharing are different things.
Family Library sharing is a feature Valve support and have implemented into steam. Any other method of sharing your account outside of that feature isn't allowed.
Yes it does sound fair, it's still your account, your game and your responsibility. People should be more careful about who they allow access to their account even through supported means.
A VAC ban only applies to a handful of games at most. Four Source games, Seven Gold Source games, the others are all individual bans.
You have a large library yourself , would you rather loose 7 games or all 5000+ of them? If it came down to it I'd take the VAC band and the 7 personally.
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it's not even about losing a few games. i could deal with that. it's more about getting a brand mark on my profile page for life. that is what i have a problem with. and not only in case of false positives. also in case of real cheats. you shouldn't get marked for an infinite amount of time. i think you shouldn't get marked at all. or at least only for a few months or so.
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Whether or not you should get branded is a separate issue though. My initial point was that account sharing in the manner OP mentioned isn't allowed by Valve and is grounds for his account to be terminated and how I considered that light punishment by comparison to losing a whole account.
I didn't mention the profile branding as that wasn't really relevant. You get VAC banned you get a new badge and loose a game - you get suspended for account sharing and you loose everything.
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My initial point was that account sharing in the manner OP mentioned isn't allowed by Valve
well, the OP says that was my friend, my brother, my cousin, which pretty much sounds like family sharing to me. he never said anything about account sharing in the way you are referring to.
Whether or not you should get branded is a separate issue though.
sure, it is. but when discussing the pros and cons of VAC, this is a very important point, in my opinion.
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Account sharing doesn't exclude it being family members. As a feature outside of the beta Family Library Sharing is relatively new feature. Almost all the posts questioning vac bans where a user "claims it was someone else" will predate the feature. They also can't be false negatives as stating someone else did it is admitting the cheating did occur.
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Family sharing isn't a new feature. I've been family sharing my account for almost a year now.
There are 2 different point of view for this.
In one way, it isn't really that fair to VAC ban the account owner when it was in fact, a family member using family sharing feature that does the hacking.
But on the other side, there is no possible way to detect whether the family shared account is not the account owner himself. If family sharing does not ban the account owner, then VAC can be very easily bypassed by creating alt account and family share to cheat.
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I've just checked and it has been out of beta longer than I thought it had but I did say "relatively new". VAC has been around since 2002. So there will still be significantly more VAC ban sob stories from traditional account sharing than from family sharing.
My initial statement was that account sharing (in the traditional sense) isn't allowed. Several users then wrongly claimed that it was by citing the family sharing feature. Whilst the end results may be similar the two aren't the same.
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And also it is manipulable, I saw a youtuber who thinks someone in his game was cheating and he reached out his followers and made them report that guy and the guy got vac ban. I don't know if he was cheating or not but being reported by lets say 5k people would surely get you banned. And most of people who does overwatch doesn't know the system very well and they call hacks easily.
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It's your account after all, assuming you're implying they could get banned on steam. If I choose to share my account, I'm doing it at my own risk. If I get VAC banned because someone else played, that's my fault. I don't believe that an account ban is appropriate, since the account is your intellectual property (I won't edit, but I'm retarded. :p).
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What you believe is irrelevant, it's right there in the SSA that you agreed to when you created your account and every single time you activate a product. Sure it's harsh and it might not happen but that doesn't change the point I was making that compared to losing an entire account you're getting off lightly with being banned from a handful of games.
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Valve allows you share your library with up to ten friends or family members, and they don't even have to live in the same house, town, state, or country as you do. This has nothing to do with the appropriateness of any particular VAN ban. But it is explicitly allowed.
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Account sharing and Family Library Sharing aren't the same. Using FLS so my sister can play my games is supported by Valve through specific features they've built into Steam. Giving her my password is account sharing and that's what I'm talking about when referencing it in the SSA.
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Ah, thanks. I'm not as think as I right I was. Weird...that almost ever happens.
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So does that mean that a person you've FLS'ed your games to can or can't transfer a VAC ban to you?
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They can. With FLS you authorize a machine not a user so it's particularly risky if you don't know everyone with access to that machine. The intended usage of FLS is to give an experience closer to console gaming and the usage of physical media.
I don't live with my family but do regularly stay with them when I have a couple of days off work. I have a machine authorized there so I can play co-op games with my nephew and niece when I stay with them so I don't have to take my full size tower with me. If they want to carry on playing whichever game we started when I'm not there or go back and mess around in something we've played before they can as long as I'm not playing myself. The same goes for my housemate. In that case I obviously don't need to carry my tower anyway but we typically work opposite shifts. I already have 4K+ games, there's no reason for him to buy them again unless he really want's a particular title.
It basically the same idea as owning a game on disc. In the first case I take the "disc" with me when I'm away from home, in the second I lend it out. In either case it can only be played on one machine at a time.
Traditional account sharing is different in that one of the users will typically play in offline mode so both can use the games simultaneously.
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Just the same thing you hear from everyone in jail: "I'm innocent!"
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Some people are innocent though, VAC isn't perfect at all! Most aren't though.
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Glad I could make your day (or at least a minute of it) brighter.
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"I'm a little bit toxic sometimes, can they vac ban me for it? well, if its for this it could be real"
Guy with two accounts, only for CSGO. One Vac Ban in one account, six vac bans in the other one.
I don't know if toxicity can end in Vac Ban, but thats a lot of toxicity
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Dunno about VACbans but our avatars could be friends!
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"I wasn't cheating or hacking, I got banned for a cosmetic mod. I don't think it is fair to get banned for something that just changes the appearance of things. After I've paid for a game I should be able to use mods to choose how things look."
"What kind of cosmetic mod?"
"It made the walls in CS:GO see-through."
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there are actual cases where people got bans for cosmetic mods. graphical overhauls for old games and such. that to me is a false positive. and the fact that we can't use mods for many of "our" games without fear of getting a VAC ban should be seen critical by all of us.
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I.e. source games: you can do cosmetic mods without getting VAC banned, because server purity will automatically kick you.
VAC bans happen if you INJECT stuff into your running process, to circumvent purity behavior, meaning: gaining an unfair advantage over others.
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What about fraps, msi afterburner or rivatuner OSD?
Both inject cpu/gpu temperature and fps meters into rendering frame. Or they are whitelisted by valve?
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Depends on what you "inject". I.e.: there have been cases of false VACs due custom TS3 overlays, and other examples, which have been reverted though.
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there is of course cosmetic stuff that uses dll injection. one example (and a very good video about this topic):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG6fo34JOAk
(the mod used there is for Half Life)
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"Cosmetic stuff" via dll injection could be anything, so how should a program differentiate?
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whitelisting. mod creators could apply for the whitelist, and valve could work through the mods and add them. this would also allow for later unbanning in case of false positives with not yet whitelisted mods.
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You mean, devs allowing models and textures to be changed, or even simple solutions... like workshop support?
:P
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Thing is, some cosmetic mods or graphical overhauls can make enemies stand out from background more.
Shouldn't be VACworthy, but maybe kick worthy.
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yes, they can. but not all do. some are just harmless graphical overhauls. and i hate to think about that my whole account could get marked for such a harmless mod.
i don't know what the best solution would be. maybe people's accounts shouldn't get marked as cheater. maybe the ban should be something only the account's owner can see. or maybe VAC should just go, and the games should offer anti-cheat protection themselves. but it can't be that i might get banned and marked as a cheater for a simple mod that has nothing to do with cheating, simply because it uses dll injection.
one example was dark souls 2. i have a 21:9 monitor. the port was bad enough to not support my aspect ratio. that is really something that takes quite a bit of fun out of the game for me. and well, i was afraid to use a mod to correct what the devs forgot, because the game was VAC protected. i don't think it is an ideal situation, as it is now.
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Programs can't read your intention.
Anyways, you can always use the -insecure command, or not support such developers by... not buying.
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so i complain about my lessened experience in this game i really love (due to missing 21:9 support), and your solution would be to completely eliminate the experience just to make a statement (that nobody will care about)? no sorry, i'm not trying to save the world with every move i make. sometimes i just want to have fun. not buying at all is not an option here. ;)
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That is something you have to decide for yourself.
Either way, my point being: if you circumvent anti-cheat mechanics, then you certainly can not act surprised if you get caught. Your intentions aside.
Btw.: does the "mod" not work if you launch the game with -insecure?
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Either way, my point being: if you circumvent anti-cheat mechanics, then you certainly can not act surprised if you get caught. Your intentions aside.
i don't feel i circumvent anything by using a graphical mod.
Btw.: does the "mod" not work if you launch the game with -insecure?
what does -insecure do, exactly? ^^ never heard of it. i guess it connects to unprotected servers, if available? is that argument available for all VAC protected games?
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Wallhack would be also a graphical mod... just saying ^^
Not really. -insecure is usually a plain server command, intended to disable VAC checks on source games, also works on some source games as a client. Should have maybe not just thrown it out "to test". Still risky to use after all as a client - depending on implementation and game. Sorry for that.
Anyways, going a bit specific here, and in terms of DS i really got no experience. Hope you'll find a solution though.
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well, they removed VAC for Dark Souls 2 some time after release. so this was more an example from the past, and not really a current problem of mine. ;)
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There are a lot of issues around that one. Certainly there are legitimately ' cosmetic' mods that people have gotten VAC banned for and that does suck. But it there a practical way to allow for cosmetic modding in a competitive multiplayer game? One persons idea of a cosmetic mod can easily be another persons idea of cheating. If you start whitelisting certain cosmetic mods than hacks will just start spoofing those or maybe people will start slipping mods into the whitelist with hidden payloads. Who can/should/would take responsibility for such whitelists?
It's not an argument I really want to have, although much like drugs testing in physical sports I can certainly see why Valve are happier just to ban people for any software that modifies certain areas of the running processes of competitive games rather than getting into the specifics of what is happening. But I do really think that a lot of people complaining about getting banned for cosmetic mods were actually doing something else, much like the people blaming things on their cat, etc.
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But I do really think that a lot of people complaining about getting banned for cosmetic mods were actually doing something else, much like the people blaming things on their cat, etc.
sure. but that still doesn't change the fact that there are false positives. and the implementation is made in a way so that you are publicly marked as a cheater, which can really hurt your online reputation. i mean, look how much hate everyone with a VAC ban gets here on SG, even if the ban was 5 years ago. i saw the statement "one time cheater, always cheater" so often on this forum. hell, we even have a way to exclude them from giveaways (and many people use it). if they can't find a practical way to prevent false positives, then at least they should change the implementation. is it really necessary that everyone can see if you cheated 10 years ago? i don't think so.
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I'm certainly not a fan of the VAC system. It's something that is deeply flawed and needs reform. It's causing a lot of concern and upset on many levels and it isn't even keeping cheaters out of the games it protects. But I am still concerned about the practicalities of allowing for any mods in competitive games - I'm not saying it should be ruled out, but how do you go about it in reality? And certainly within the context of this thread that was actually a true story that I originally posted rather than an attack on modders in general.
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well, there are a few possibilities (and neither of them are perfect).
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whitelist mods. drop the zero tolerance policy. if people complain about an unjustified ban, investigate and - if it's true - whitelist the mod. i know it's a lot of effort on valve's part i demand here. but they also get a lot of money from all of us.
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if we keep accepting false positives and there is no way around, at least don't mark people publicly. let the VAC ban warning appear on the profile, but not the follow-up message ("last VAC ban 666 days ago"). that message means a false positive has lifelong consequences for the social (online-)life of the victim. and that could be so easily prevented. this also goes for real cheaters, by the way. people change. if someone cheated one time at the age of 14, this doesn't have to stick on his profile forever. maybe he's another person 10 years later. and people on steam will be aggressive towards him for something he did such a long time ago. i don't see how that's reasonable in any way. it's like a tattoo on your forehead "i stole a pack of cigarettes when i was 14". ^^
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i was just thinking of a third option some minutes ago, but while writing all this i seem to have forgotten it. oh well...
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Whitelisting is the best option but there are plenty of arguments against it. The obvious one is the effort involved on the part of Valve and that goes far beyond just looking what a mod appears to do. A popular game like CS:GO would clearly rapidly get thousands or even tens of thousands of appilcations for whitelist mods. Hackers are sneaky and rigorous expert testing would be needed to make sure that superficially cosmetic mods didn't include hidden payloads and backdoors or work to mask more malevolent code. And constant monitoring would be required to make sure mods weren't edited after the fact or unauthorised hacks weren't spoofing whitelisted mods.
Valve do make a lot of money out of gamers and they do deserve better support than they currently get - but proper whitelisting would quickly become a monumental task possibly costing even more than the revenue from the relevant games.
Beyond the effort involved it would mean working far more closely with the community about what is and isn't allowed and what would and wouldn't trigger anti-cheat software and what elements of their code are and are off-limits. Valve are in an arms race with professional hackers and one of their main defences is the secrecy around the technical details surrounding VAC bans. There are good arguments that they might do better with more involvement from knowledgeable members of the community, but I can't see them changing their current policy (even if much like the 'war on drugs' it simply isn't working).
And then there is the fact that it would just lead to endless rows within the gaming community about what is and isn't cosmetic. Many cosmetic mods do highlight targets or make them more visible in some way and in a fiercely competitive community any hint of unfair advantage isn't going to go down well. On the other hand is it an unfair advantage if somebody has a better mouse than somebody else? I'm not arguing for or against - just going through the practical considerations.
I don't agree with the permanent visible VAC bans myself. If nothing else it means too many people make a new acoount and use their VAC banned account for cheating, scamming etc because they don't feel it matters anymore. I've seen more than a few reliable traders go rogue after getting a VAC ban and it doesn't seem helpful in any way. There needs to be some sort of an incentive for people to reform and make good rather than just make a new account.
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well, it doesn't have to be all existing mods. i agree the effort would be rather extreme. ^^ but a well known texture mod for a well known game (like Half Life 1 in the super bunnyhop video i posted somewhere here) should be doable. they could start with a few popular mods for every game and go from there. it doesn't have to be thousands of mods. because it's just unrealistic, i agree there. but a whitelist with the most popular mods would be a good start. graphical mods for old games, 21:9 mods for people like me, and so on. and a simple hash could make sure the files are not altered. i think this could work.
(sorry for the short answer, i have to stop for now and do some work ^^)
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a steam friend kept trying to convince me that when he left his room, his dog did something that made him get a VAC ban, after a while i gave up and was like yea fuck gaben, its your dogs fault not yours ofc ( ͡° _ʖ ͡°)
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Thanks to these lying guys nobody ever believes my 100% true story that after some drunken shenanigans in a stable the police CSI guys had my computer to find some bestiality vids (that I did not have) and those fuckers got me banned in Counter Strike.
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Thanks to your topic I now know what a vac-ban is. Never heard of it before. I feel such a noob right now xD
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Going to VACation such a shamefull thing, even the cheaters know it. Excuses are not particularly funny more or less they are all the same, just pathetic.
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I have a friend who bought cs:go, got VAC banned in one month, bought it again on another account and got that account VAC banned as well 1month later. He doesn't know the reason why he got banned, but I know him quite well and am pretty sure he was not cheating (if you can get banned for insulting others, that would probably be the reason).
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if you can get banned for insulting others, that would probably be the reason
You can theoretically get a Game Ban for insulting people but a VAC-Ban is different. Its automatic and detects programs injecting into the game. And the few false positives I heard about were all revoked.
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A while ago someone used a public number to purposefully cheat on it.
Not sure if genius, funny, sad or really stupid by the others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EdNxpDBCNY
(they're all still banned)
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Okay, wow. Two points of stupidity here: first, it's stupid to tie a public number to your account. That's stupid on the user's part. Stupid on Valve's part? Recognizing that it's an insecure number, as seen in the video by the confirmation screen, yet still behaving as if it's an actual link between people.
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Well, "insecure", as in can be used i.e. via VOIP apps, which would circumvent the whole point of 2FA.
But not actually insecure per design.
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THATS PURE EVIL AND I LIKE IT!
My friend has my number so he could fuck me just for the trolls :(
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Damn, this guy set a new level on how to be an asshole.
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quite a lot of people have...and pretty much everyone who isn´t whining about their ban on reddit is admitting it aswell xD
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based on your profile picture and the number of games you have gifted, I think I can safely say you are forgiven - not sure what others think but I speak for me :)
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Whenever people screw something up, be it in MMO games or on various forums and discussions, the excuse I always hear is: "I left [the game/forum] open and went to the bathroom and my younger brother came and did that!". Yeah, sure. Suuuuure :D
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I found a genie and asked him to send me on VACation and so the genie gave me a VAC ban.
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Im not quit sure! ^^
I'm thinking either:
1) It was my little brother.
2) I was modding.
3) I was bored.
4) I was hacked.
5) My friend/roommate played on my account (against Steam rules).
6) Every VAC ban is a false positive.
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Yes, it's very disconcerting to know that there are over 4.5 million naughty little brothers, false positives, bored people, modders, hack victims, naughty friends and roommates to date! ^^
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oh my god - just how many people want to cheat is an eye opener to me - man I have got to stop being so naive - or at least so trusting in others !
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No!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are all victims!!!!!!!!!!!!! ^^
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Am I the only one if getting vac'd would create a new account no matter how many games I had, i would buy them all again :\
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But you would also have to buy an old account xD
Im quite proud of my 12 year badge
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i'd go back to my 8years old account and stack all the games again :|
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I totally wouldn't. If I ever get a VAC (which I highly doubt would happen, since I rarely even play multiplayer games or games that can give a VAC in the first place), I would just deal with it. Of course it would be a bit annoying at times, but I don't think it would impact me much, except for here on SG.
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I wouldn't.
Besides all the money I put into over 3000 games, theres ALL MY ACHIEVEMENTS, screenshots, memories etc on it.
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got VAC becuase i installed a mod to the 18 year old Half-Life 1, the funniest part is that it was true...
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Interesting topic.. Except when you buy an account of Ebay knowing full well its states (CSGO VAC BAN) but the account had nearly 200 games worth over $1000 that i purchased for $40. As i never have been.. and never wil be interested in (csgo) i really dont care about that vacban at all... Am i still tarred with the same brush? meh.
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Well, for once, having a VAC ban automatically mark you with the "cheater" label, in the eyes of many.
Yeah, that's kinda silly, isn't it?
Furthermore, not many people would be inclined to play a multiplayer game with you, because of that.
No one likes playing against "cheaters".
But the disadvantages carry over this site too, as you won't be able to enter most SGTools protected giveaways.
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"I was VAC banned because my friend cheated in the same lobby I was in".
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I don't want to think about the idea, having an angry relative getting so angry they ruin your account with a VAC ban or heck leave your computer unattended (and you use auto login because you are lazy), and your 7yr old kid wants to try out this cs:go, finds a cheat for it (because they tend to just install any crap they want). Like one shouldn't even trust their relatives with it? Always logoff each time you are away from your pc? It can happen.
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So unfair! I thought a VAC ban was a restriction from using my vacuum cleaner... And trust me I haven't used my vacuum for a long time... I'm uploading a pic of my nasty floors to prove it...
Since I was ignorant of what a VAC ban was... Please un-VAC ban me and I'll start vacuuming my floors again!
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the system isn't perfect, it will catch both people cheating on purpose and others using harmless mods.
everyone with a vac ban is guilty
he has a vac ban so he did something bad
classic fascist thinking.
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Shittiest excuse I ever read: I was VAC banned because I used a card idling software.
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First of all sorry for my bed england.
So what was the funnies VACban story you heard? Whenever I ask someone about his/her ban they always come up with some sorry ass story like noooo that was not me, that was my friend, my brother, my cousin, it was my cat who used cheats etc.
I've already asked some people about their story but they always deny it and they are blaming someone else or they are saying they were banned for no reason etc.
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