Counter-Strike 2 players have been banned and unbanned enmasse, stemming from a recent update. Read on to learn who were affected, what the probable causes were, and more.
Related Video
Counter-Strike 2 And False Bans
Latest CS2 Update Induced a Massive Ban Wave Affecting Innocents
Counter-Strike 2 players worldwide had suddenly started receiving game bans with the latest update. Thousands of complaints suddenly filled all CS2 communities, from Steam’s forums, Reddit, and Twitter(X). The bans were seemingly random, affecting veteran accounts with thousands of hours, accounts with high-value CS skin inventories, professional esports players, and even casual players.
It’s important to note that they were issued “Game Bans,” and not “VAC Bans.” VAC, or Valve-Anti-Cheat, is Valve’s proprietary anti-cheat technology that automatically detects and bans cheaters from official matchmaking games that utilize it. Game Bans are issued by game developers themselves to “address malicious behavior that falls outside of VAC detection.” This means that it’s up to the developers’ discretions on how severe the bans could be. (via Valve Support).
What we can infer is that the latest update seemingly caused not VAC, but an unknown feature to automatically, and mercilessly, issue Game Bans
at random on Valve’s behalf.
Valve Reverses Bans
Valve had been quick to assess and respond to the outcry on Twitter(X), immediately identifying the issues and have started reversing the bans.
“Yesterday's update mistakenly triggered game bans. We've fixed the issue and ban rollbacks are in progress.”
They did not shed light as to what could have caused the massive wave of false bans, whether it was a software issue or hardware incompatibility. Similar issues happened in October, where CS2 players were also falsely banned when they used AMD’s “Anti-Lag+” Driver update.
AMD’s "Anti-Lag+" Driver Update Caused CS2 Players to Receive VAC Bans
In the middle of October, AMD pushed out an update for their “Anti-Lag+” feature that’s designed to “reduce input lag in GPU-limited cases and get faster click-to-response times.” (via AMD) However, the update proved to be far too intrusive by interfering with Counter-Strike 2’s code itself. This interference was automatically picked up by VAC. The anti-cheat, executing as intended, detected AMD’s intrusions and immediately banned all users who installed the update, enabled the feature, and booted up Counter-Strike 2.
This evidently frustrated Valve, to the extent that they sent out a tweet regarding the dilemma. They briefly explained the cause of the bans, issued instructions on how to avoid it, and assured that once AMD ships a new update, they [Valve] can start reversing the false VAC bans.
“If you are an AMD customer and play CS2, DO NOT ENABLE ANTI-LAG+; any tampering with CS code will result in a VAC ban. Once AMD ships an update we can do the work of identifying affected users and reversing their ban.”
Sources:
HowHardware
Dust2
Valve Support
AMD Anti-Lag+
