Steam has swung the banhammer once more beginning July 17th, marking a new record for the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system with 60.000 targeted accounts in one day only. The new Steam ban wave is the biggest one we’ve seen for a long time, showing how the company isn’t treating cheaters lightly.
According to SteamDB, More than 80.000 accounts were wiped during this Steam ban wave, with 28.440 of those bans happening on the first day. After that, another 61.466 accounts were hit by the banhammer on July 19th, marking a new record for the company.
There’s no reported activity of Steam bans for today, however, players are not in the clear yet. This year has been the biggest one for bans on the platform, especially after the release of easy cheating methods, openly downloaded and used.
Here are the most popular titles with Valve Anti-Cheat integrated:
- Dota 2
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
- Team Fortress 2
- Garry’s Mod
- Rust
- Call of Duty: WW2
- Left 4 Dead 2
- ARK: Survival Evolved
- Killing Floor
- Dying Light
If you’re still not familiar with the term VAC – Valve Anti-Cheat, let us fill you in. According to its Steam description, 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.
To ensure your account does not get VAC banned, use only trusted machines to play on VAC-Secured servers. If you are not sure whether or not the machine you are using to connect to Steam may have cheats installed, do not play on VAC-Secured servers.
One thing you should also keep an eye for when playing games with VAC is when installing any game modifications like scripts or custom skins, and only downloading custom content from untrusted sources.
Are you one of the players targeted by the new Steam ban wave? What was the reason for your ban?
