I Got Falsely VAC-Banned on CS:GO
IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THE ENTIRE POST, I'D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU COULD JUST READ THE LAST SUBHEADING ABOUT 'WHAT WE CAN DO'
THANK YOU.
Not quite the post I thought I'd be writing today, but here I am.
My next thought was this: if I can somehow find out HOW and WHY I was banned, maybe I can somehow appeal the decision. But surprise, surprise, I hit another dead end. If you consult Steam Support forums over the issue, this is all you'll be able to come up with:
"We do not disclose the cheats that were detected while connected to a VAC secured server that resulted in a VAC ban.
We have detailed records for each VAC ban, however, releasing this information would only benefit cheat developers. The VAC team regularly investigates claims of false VAC bans to increase the effectiveness of Valve Anti-Cheat."
Guess what Steam. I'm not a cheat developer. And the fact that false VAC bans are "regularly investigated" does not matter to me unless it gets removed.
I then went to my best friend who can help me with almost every issue in life - Google. But on this one occasion, although Google wasn't useful to me, it was interesting and only added to my confusion. A community member had said this on a Steam community forum I found via Google.
"The way VAC works is that it checks the PC you're logged into your Steam account with and are playing the game on for known cheats and/or modified game files. VAC scans specifically for those, and these are the only things that can trigger a VAC ban"
From this I can draw three conclusions regarding the reason for my ban.
1) Hacks have been remotely installed onto my computer. (0.1% chance because I can't find them anywhere and I have no idea how that's even possible)
2) My account has been compromised from another PC, which has hacks installed (unlikely because I've never had an account hacked and I've seen nothing suspicious, but possible I suppose)
3) A program on my laptop has somehow triggered the VAC ban. (I haven't installed anything recently, so that's kinda weird, but this is the most likely reason)
Now I don't want anyone reading this to get me wrong. I HAVE LOOKED EVERYWHERE ON MY COMPUTER AND DONE VIRUS SCANS to look for anything either remotely suspicious or anything that might have triggered this. And to be honest, I can't find anything. But ya know, if I had access to the damn reason why I was banned, I wouldn't be having this problem.
1) This VAC ban has rendered my game unusable. I am now unable to join ANY VAC secured server. What this means in simple English, is that I'm unable to join any competitive or casual CS:GO game. Every single game-mode on the 'play' section of CS:GO will connect you to a secure server, meaning I can't play CS:GO anymore. Actually, this isn't strictly true, as I can play on community servers, but anyone who has played the game understands why that isn't as fun or as rewarding as playing the real game.
2) As I've spoken about already in this post, there is no way of appealing this ban. There is no live support system, and the ticket system is highly ineffective and the likelihood of getting a result is next to nothing. The Valve support for their own games instantly redirects you back to Steam, so you have the same problem. The reason for this problem is that Steam and Valve have full confidence that everyone who is banned is correctly banned. This is an issue because for the very few that slip through the cracks, (such as myself,) have very little platform to appeal this and get the ban lifted.
3) One of the biggest reasons for my anger at Valve is the MONEY. Even if I can disregard the fact that I can't actually play the game anymore, we need to take my financial investment into account. I paid £11.99 for the game which is bad enough, but I also invested between £20 and £30 worth of skins. That means at best, I've lost £32 and at worst I've lost £42. The reason I've lost that money is because all skins in the inventory of a VAC banned account are locked and cannot be transferred to other accounts. I don't know about anyone reading this, but in the financial situation that my family and I are in, EVEN £30 is a lot of money. I CANNOT AFFORD FOR £30 OF MY MONEY TO BE ESSENTIALLY SEIZED AND RETAINED FROM ME FOR AN UNJUSTIFIED AND FALSE VAC BAN.
I will edit in the tweet link BELOW THIS after the post goes live. If you could all ReTweet it I would much appreciate it.
Tweet - https://twitter.com/jman0605/status/784792947762008064
Twitter - @jman0605
THANK YOU.
Not quite the post I thought I'd be writing today, but here I am.
So I got banned. And I didn't just get banned. It was literally a VAC ban.
Some Background
Now for those of you that don't know, VAC stands for Valve Anti Cheat, and its purpose is to ban players in Valve games who are using known modified game files, otherwise known as hacks. Hacks give players an unfair advantage over other players, such as the ability to look through walls or instantly lock onto players to kill them almost instantly.
Before today, I thought VAC was a great system with very few unfairly banned players.
When I got home today after being out for a few hours, I was greeted with this message when I launched CS:GO:
Naturally, I instantly consulted the Steam Support website where I saw this really, really unhelpful message.
At this point in time, it seems as if I am relying on mysterious powers from above to "automatically remove" my VAC ban. Even if I decided to file a complaint to Steam Support, (despite their apparent inability to do anything about it,) there is no live support and a very inefficient ticket support system where you're lucky to get a reply in a few weeks.
Trying to Establish WHY I was banned
"We do not disclose the cheats that were detected while connected to a VAC secured server that resulted in a VAC ban.
We have detailed records for each VAC ban, however, releasing this information would only benefit cheat developers. The VAC team regularly investigates claims of false VAC bans to increase the effectiveness of Valve Anti-Cheat."
Guess what Steam. I'm not a cheat developer. And the fact that false VAC bans are "regularly investigated" does not matter to me unless it gets removed.
I then went to my best friend who can help me with almost every issue in life - Google. But on this one occasion, although Google wasn't useful to me, it was interesting and only added to my confusion. A community member had said this on a Steam community forum I found via Google.
"The way VAC works is that it checks the PC you're logged into your Steam account with and are playing the game on for known cheats and/or modified game files. VAC scans specifically for those, and these are the only things that can trigger a VAC ban"
From this I can draw three conclusions regarding the reason for my ban.
1) Hacks have been remotely installed onto my computer. (0.1% chance because I can't find them anywhere and I have no idea how that's even possible)
2) My account has been compromised from another PC, which has hacks installed (unlikely because I've never had an account hacked and I've seen nothing suspicious, but possible I suppose)
3) A program on my laptop has somehow triggered the VAC ban. (I haven't installed anything recently, so that's kinda weird, but this is the most likely reason)
Now I don't want anyone reading this to get me wrong. I HAVE LOOKED EVERYWHERE ON MY COMPUTER AND DONE VIRUS SCANS to look for anything either remotely suspicious or anything that might have triggered this. And to be honest, I can't find anything. But ya know, if I had access to the damn reason why I was banned, I wouldn't be having this problem.
The Real Reasons I'm Pissed
There are so many reasons why this VAC ban pisses me off. I'm going to name some of the main ones here and a little bit about why, even thought it should be pretty self explanatory.1) This VAC ban has rendered my game unusable. I am now unable to join ANY VAC secured server. What this means in simple English, is that I'm unable to join any competitive or casual CS:GO game. Every single game-mode on the 'play' section of CS:GO will connect you to a secure server, meaning I can't play CS:GO anymore. Actually, this isn't strictly true, as I can play on community servers, but anyone who has played the game understands why that isn't as fun or as rewarding as playing the real game.
2) As I've spoken about already in this post, there is no way of appealing this ban. There is no live support system, and the ticket system is highly ineffective and the likelihood of getting a result is next to nothing. The Valve support for their own games instantly redirects you back to Steam, so you have the same problem. The reason for this problem is that Steam and Valve have full confidence that everyone who is banned is correctly banned. This is an issue because for the very few that slip through the cracks, (such as myself,) have very little platform to appeal this and get the ban lifted.
3) One of the biggest reasons for my anger at Valve is the MONEY. Even if I can disregard the fact that I can't actually play the game anymore, we need to take my financial investment into account. I paid £11.99 for the game which is bad enough, but I also invested between £20 and £30 worth of skins. That means at best, I've lost £32 and at worst I've lost £42. The reason I've lost that money is because all skins in the inventory of a VAC banned account are locked and cannot be transferred to other accounts. I don't know about anyone reading this, but in the financial situation that my family and I are in, EVEN £30 is a lot of money. I CANNOT AFFORD FOR £30 OF MY MONEY TO BE ESSENTIALLY SEIZED AND RETAINED FROM ME FOR AN UNJUSTIFIED AND FALSE VAC BAN.
Believe it or not, there is something YOU and I can do about this
This is arguably the most important subheading of this post. Despite everything I've said in this post, and despite how little Steam or Valve seem to care about this, there is a small chance that I can get this ban lifted.
There are stories of people getting falsely accused of being VAC banned, and of their ban being lifted. It seems unlikely, and these people are often accused of being fakes, but I believe that it is possible.
There are 3 ways in which this ban can be lifted, 1 of which can be possibly helped along by the person reading this.
1) I can hope and pray that the Valve gods realise that my account was falsely banned, and that they lift it accordingly. I have no idea how likely this is, just that it is possible.
2) I can bombard the Steam Support ticket system regarding my false ban and hope they see sense and lift it. Despite them saying they don't have that power, I have read stories which directly contradicts that.
3) Possibly the most unlikely way, but if everyone reading this right now can share this post, either on Google+ or by ReTweeting the tweet I'm going to edit in below it is possible that we can get a big enough audience to flag this up to Steam or Valve.
Unlikely, but possible.I will edit in the tweet link BELOW THIS after the post goes live. If you could all ReTweet it I would much appreciate it.
Tweet - https://twitter.com/jman0605/status/784792947762008064
To Summarise
I was falsely VAC banned. I guess it happens, I just never thought it would happen to me. I've tried to give you a balanced and reasonable summary of events for the reasons why I may have got banned, although this is still unclear due to the non disclosure policy of Valve.
If you could all share this post in any way you can, I would very much appreciate it. I would also appreciate any comments, including feedback and criticisms of this post.
And to everyone who likes to read my blog in general, I may or may not have another post up today, if not then I will definitely be back tomorrow with some more news for all of you.
Thank you very much for reading, and hopefully I can get this ban lifted, cya :D
Twitter - @jman0605
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