VAC banned accounts should be deleted. Period.

[CTRL ALT DEL !]

Originally Posted by Satoru

If you're going ~ openeing the floodgates of VAC banned accounts either.

Indeed the entire bans issue is hard to deal with, but public bans cause more cheating imho. I have heard of many people getting banned on every VAC game on the account before getting another account.

In that instance it was a revenge cheat for getting banned unfairly, if he had waited a few gays he would have been unbanned with the other that were in the MW2 mass ban.

Instead he got angry for getting banned and cheated in every game he owned until he was banned in them all and he hasn't used Steam since. (a good thing imho)

Anyway that opened my eyes to what banned people do with a useless account. Mostly they either try to sell it and get some money back or they cheat even more (or for the first time in that case I mentioned) until every game on it is banned.

I think a temporary ban on every VAC game should come into effect when you are banned to try to prevent "revenge" cheating. If you had a 3 month block on all VAC games for a single ban and doubling that for each additional ban and making it immediate if using well know public cheats that are known to be detected (those an angry person would download to use because they don't care, they are angry).

Putting a temporary ban on all games would also have stopped my friend (he is bipolar) from going silly and getting himself a real ban. I just seems logical and is a better punishment as they can't play any secure games for 3 months, not just the game the cheated on being blocked from secure games.

td/dr add a temp ban to all VAC games when you get a ban.

[Satoru]

Originally Posted by CTRL ALT DEL !

Indeed the entire bans issue is hard to deal with, but public bans cause more cheating imho. I have heard of many people getting banned on every VAC game on the account before getting another account.

For those individuals, a public or private VAC ban hardly matters then, thus is somewhat irrelevant.

In that instance it was a revenge cheat for getting banned unfairly, if he had waited a few gays he would have been unbanned with the other that were in the MW2 mass ban.

Unlikely as VAC bans are based on signature and thus their VAC ban would have stood since the specific signature detected would not have correlated with the false positive.

Instead he got angry for getting banned and cheated in every game he owned until he was banned in them all and he hasn't used Steam since. (a good thing imho)

Anyway that opened my eyes to what banned people do with a useless account. Mostly they either try to sell it and get some money back or they cheat even more (or for the first time in that case I mentioned) until every game on it is banned.

Public VAC bans were not designed for these kinds of users. People are going to react in specific ways. Any user who's going to react that like to a VAC ban is likely to have acted in a similar fashion regardless if the ban was public are private. These are 'life cheaters' and will not be dissuaded by any monetary or other barriers. They would have acted teh same no matter.

[CTRL ALT DEL !]

Originally Posted by Satoru

Unlikely as VAC bans are based on signature and thus their VAC ban would have stood since the specific signature detected would not have correlated with the false positive.

He didn't cheat until after he was banned for the unsigned file that got thousands banned.

If they blocked all VAC games for a period after a ban it would have stopped him getting banned. He couldn't have raged and got all his games banned. Ironical the only game on that account not banned is MW2, that ban was reversed.

If they blocked all games for a period this wouldn't have happened to him and he would still be plating without a ban on record. He was furious at the ban and wouldn't listen to reason and when silly cheating on every game he had, except mw2 that wouldn't load.

Now I can see other people behaving like this and giving them a temp all VAC games ban would give them time to find out if it is a false ban or they somehow got banned another way. Either way it would stop knee jerk retaliation to a ban and allow players to cool down before playing another multiplayer game.

Don't get me wrong I am not helping cheaters in any way, I am trying to prevent cheating or slow down it's occurrence.

If removing a visual ban after a 3 month period and unlocking the other VAC games resulted in less reoffending on banned accounts, it would be worth doing. Not removing the tag does nothing to prevent further cheating.

If VAC banned tags stayed up while the other games were locked from use and were removed when the other VAC games became playable and this happened after each ban, people would see they are a repeat offender.

Oh and how about a three strikes and you are out. After 3 VAC bans on 3 different games from your normal ip /pc and you are out. All VAC games are permanently banned and you can't purchase an unbanned VAC game. Purchasing VAC games after 3 bans would be for single player or insecure servers only and you should be told such at the checkout.

[Karne123]

why should someone who gets VAC banned be unable to play games on their account? games that could have costed them $100s of money? being VAC banned only prevents them from playing VAC games online. and, how does it stop them from complaining on forums? the forum isnt connected to Steam accounts.

either way, the banned person can just create another account and buy the game and play again.

the only way for someone to get their account toally disabled is if they break the TOS bad, like selling the account, scams and criminal offenses. cheating in online games isnt covered by that.

[restlessgamer75]

the reason why some people say that is because they think that players who hacked will start hacking in other games for instance
i hacked in MW2 but when i play CS:S people immidiatly presume that because i hacked i'm also gonna hack in CS:S therefore they immidiatly ban me

[Gomorrha21]

"Not sure if trolling".

So you have about 200 games on Steam, including both retail and digital copies, and a cheater should lose access to EVERY GAME THEY SPENT MONEY ON?
I don't even have games which use VAC (yes, my profile is private for reasons, but any Valve employee can verify I have neither a VAC ban, nor any competitive game, besides the free TF2 - if someone ever asks to), so I don't know if really THAT many cheaters roam the servers.

While I will not approve everything, I think how the penalty from Valve works is just right: You just lose the privilege to play on secured servers, you don't even get excluded on non-VAC servers. If the ban occured in a game which allows multiplayer only through VAC, it's your own fault.

If someone cheats in random-world-war-shooter part 9, but cannot access, say Civilization V, I'd understand if they rushed their lawyers to Valve. I might understand, how cheating really sucks and is a facepalm in every legitimate player, who spends his/her time to enjoy some fair competition, but on the other hand people must not be punished to lose games not having to do with the violation.

Deleting the entire account from people who hacked - and NEED to be punished and taken out of the game environment (at least for the game they cheated) is just a plain silly idea.

[KnownUnknown]

Originally Posted by Wardiaper

Let's see -

- Blame Valve.
- Blame gaming community
- Blame anyone but who caused this

- Don't blame yourself
- Don't blame whoever provided the cheats
- Pretend to be the victim.




You have completely missed the point. Suddenly you are so easily offended. I'm offended that the cheaters are pretending to be the victims - That is the point. I'm offended that you think an honest community is the bad guy trying to crucify you - the helpless innocent victims. You are the perpetrators.

You want to blame someone - blame yourself first and the people that provided the cheats second for not properly informing you of the consequences of cheating. Have any of you cheaters gone back to the place you got the hacks and even tried to inform people what would happen? Probably not your job, but somehow it is Valve's job and the community must embrace your born again honest gaming . . . until you decide to cheat again.

First off, you chode, I'm no cheater so don't bother directing that kind of inflammatory dialogue at me. Secondly, I was not offended by your statement; I was simply amazed that anyone would be dumb enough to make a comparison -- no matter the intent behind it -- between the taking of human life and cheating in video games. It's unbelievable that you are even attempting to justify it (which, by the way, you're doing a completely jarate-poor job of).

It seems to me that you are the easily-offended one here. Accept the fact that there are two types of cheaters: chronic cheaters and one-time cheaters. They don't deserve the same punishment. Anyone that thinks otherwise is just being bloodthirsty, petty, and vengeful.

Are you seriously still that angry with the dude that killed you 23 times with an auto-aimer in that one Team Fortress match a few years back? Get over it and stop making innapropriately stupid comparisons in an attempt to vent your butthurt.

[§W-]

Originally Posted by wildfire678

I'm just fed up of hearing it was ages ago, my brother did it (funnily I don't hear It was my sister that often ) or my account was hacked.

You now the easiest way to stop hearing excuses. Stop talking about someone's VAC status. How can you be so concerned about something, that you don't seem to want to actually talk about.

[debrox]

Originally Posted by Satoru

If you're going to go wtih the 'vac bans is a cash grab' then you're seriously stretching. As noted it's impossible to correlate a VAC ban with 'increased revenue', and for a company that's as tightly data driven as Valve, it makes no sense to implement something as a cash grab if there's no correlative data for it.

Public VAC bans were designed as a deterrent. Casual cheaters are effectively punished by the community. Users inside such communities see how they are treated and thus are less likely to cheat. As the OP situation aptly shows, it is entirely effective at allowing the community to police it's members. You cant' claim its ineffective while the OP situation clearly shows that the impact is very effective such that they're lookign for alternatives.

As Steam develops more community features, just like in the xbox world, people are going to have a high affinity to their profile and online avatars. These users are going to see how bans impact their profile and not cheat, or cheat then see the impact, and not cheat again.

Public bans were not designed for the 'hard core' cheater who's simply going to recreate accounts and rebuy games. For those you have to go after root cause of ensuring they get banned swiftly and effectively. Profile VAC bans were never intended to stop this kind of cheater.

While the OPs situation is perhaps regretable. There's no real effective way to 'turn back the clock' on it. VAC continues to evolve and the way to make it more effective and impactful has evolved over time. Occasionally that's going to generate consequences that no one predicted. But it's difficult to take all situations into account, and there's no real practical way to deal with teh OP's situation without effectively openeing the floodgates of VAC banned accounts either.

It sure seems that way. But what is the problem with opening that flood gate if a few statistics were true?

Here is a theoretical description, which needs verification before implementation: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...4&postcount=35

I'd also like to point out this thread serves as further evidence of the fanaticism behind the persecution of reformed ex-cheaters.

[ozipk]

Originally Posted by restlessgamer75

i have to agree with the guy in the first thread you linked not about the releasing VAC banned accounts but just the crucifixion we get from other players
yes i hacked
yes i made a mistake
yes i deserverd being banned

i'm not gonna make a thread saying unban my account
VAC does their job well but just the amount of people online saying to us

hey look a hacker, what no hacks for this game? oh you must be sad about that

or just the random nicknames we get
hacking POS
game ruiner
get out of your parents basement, etc.

we hacked
we got punished
get on in life and enjoy the game i've learned my lesson 3 years ago and i'm enjoying my games without hacking in it

Why did you hack? Every time I ask a hacker I get some trolling response so maybe if you are "reformed" you could tell me why you did it?

[Salith]

Let us make this simple, with an example;
Guy gets vacbanned on Counter Strike.
He also has Mass Effect on his account.
His account is banned/deleted/blocked/whatever.
He now no longer has access to a game he purchased which has nothing to do with VAC.
He or EA sue Valve for removing access to a game that Valve do not control through VAC and have nothing in the EULA about removing games like that.
If Valve put something in the EULA to let them do that, most developers will pull their games from Steam and Valve loses a lot of money, reputation, and good will.
Valve like good will and reputation (as well as money) so that wouldn't happen.
Ergo, disabling an account won't happen.
/thread

[Zefar]

This will never happen. There are a few reasons for it.

Cheaters are generally using accounts with few games on or they might have hijacked someone. The later being much much more rare.

People who do get VAC banned get a lot of bad rep for it if they continue to use their account.


So no, this will not happen, also think back when VAC detected something that wasn't updated and caused around 12 000 bans or so. If those where just deleted it would be a whole lot of work to get them back.