Can Avira mess up with VAC?

[quickanddead]

well since few days ago Avira got upgrade(all versions even free ones) to 2012 ver. and its' giving me problems with Team Fortress 2,last night it totally crashed the game(it only happens when it is automatically downloading virus definition updates) and game simply stuck for 10sec. screen was frozen and after that i got hl2.exe has stopped working.
also day before i was getting Warning! Connection problem autodisconnect in(time here)
somehow it work fine now,but still its' "bugging" me. also i heard that avast if picking steam up as trojan every now and than..

[JudgementBullet]

I've been using avast for 2 years and there's no such thing as Steam showing up as trojan

[enonka]

I've used avira for 2 years now, never had that problem

[Nightlock!]

People... for God's sake, it'd be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for people to be banned for games crashing.

[bha2597]

Vac system is pretty smart, they should know when is a hack or a virus

[mspacapan]

VAC works in a way that it detects if game files were modified in a way to give you an advantage. Avira however wouldn't modify the values to give you an advantage but would simply delete the file or some lines in it.
It wouldn't detect it as a hack but you can always change your antivirus or check the game's integrity

[bakugov8]

You won't get banned for a game crash, but if Avira caused it it MAY mean it's doing something that messes with the game, probably reading the memory to check for suspicious stuff.

It shouldn't give you a ban but I suggest disabling real-time protection (or just shutting down the antivirus) while playing. Remember to start it again tho.

[Satoru]

You'll be ok but as I've said these 'free' antivirus products are universally pretty horrible.