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Never understood how Valve's VAC bans are even legal. You pay for a game, Valve decides they don't like your computer and they take away your ability to play th

Never understood how Valve's VAC bans are even legal. You pay for a game, Valve decides they don't like your computer and they take away your ability to play that and other games that you paid for without refunding you. Worse, they slander you on your Steam profile page so other gamers know what Valve thinks of you. They claim to never make mistakes, but that's obviously bullshit since they make mistakes time and time again.

super256 3y ago
You don’t buy the game but a license to play it. You can still play CS after a ban, just not online on their servers or any community servers which block vac banned players. (They killed all community servers two weeks ago btw)
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  "You can play it except for the game modes people actually care about" Do you also think it's okay if a car that you bought prevents you from driving it, but oh don't worry, it's okay because you're still allowed to open the doors?
  - somehnguy 3y ago
    Look, I get where you’re coming from. But ask people who actually play competitive online games and I can all but guarantee the general consensus is that anti-cheat is celebrated, not hated. Most people’s complaint with VAC would likely be that it is too lenient or too slow to ban. Some online games don’t have anti-cheat, and they become nothing but a cheating cesspool. Which consequently drives away actual players, and then you have a dead game except for essentially bots.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      That's the same argument as "but think of the children". Are you also fine with CSAM scanning tools being installed everywhere? It's okay to have a bunch of false positives that potentially ruin people just in case you can also catch a bad apple?
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        It's not even remotely the same argument as the CSAM one. It's not a human right to play a certain video game.
        beeboobaa 3y ago
        Neither is owning a phone? What is your point?
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Because if you do own a phone then it becomes your property and the manufacturer shouldn't be allowed to invade the privacy of your data on your phone, but CS is free to play, it's not your property, it's Valve's property, and Valve is allowed to allow or ban whoever they want on it, you don't have a constitutional right to be allowed to paly CS without Valve's permission.
      - filoleg 3y ago
        > Are you also fine with CSAM scanning tools being installed everywhere? No, and neither am I ok with anticheat software doing it. Afaik, most anticheats don’t do that. They just make sure that nothing is modifying/injecting into the game code. Which is imo reasonable, as the anticheat is just monitoring for any injections/modifications to the game that it came with.
    - dbttdft 3y ago
      You argument sounds good to an executive, however, it is simply not the case that games have rampant amount of hacking in general. EDIT: Why would you just downvote this, I already suspected you're one of those idiots who thinks everyone is cheating. Now I'm just convinced, and that's enough of this self masturbating forum for the month. Most cheat accusers in games are literally clueless slobs who just sign on to level up or some idiots in a closed circle of friends and think anyone who doesn't use their basic immediate method of naive play like walking into each other and clicking on each other is cheating.
      - basique 3y ago
        > however, it is simply not the case that games have rampant amount of hacking in general. Have you played TF2 recently?
      - somehnguy 3y ago
        > however, it is simply not the case that games have rampant amount of hacking in general. Yes, many do. Especially ones with poor anti-cheat, which tend not to be very popular - because of the aforementioned cheating. Even non-overly competitive games are rampant with cheating, take a look at GTA5 online for an easy example. Without VAC games like the counter-strike series would be completely unplayable, I have over 1000 hours in the game and have ran into my fair share of extremely obvious cheaters over the years. I suspect you don't play competitive games very much if that's your view on the matter. > Why would you just downvote this, I already suspected you're one of those idiots who thinks everyone is cheating. 1. I can't downvote you, as you're a reply to my comment. Not that I would have anyway. 2. I've never cheated in an online game (my Steam account is 17 years old..), and I'm well aware that many players are not cheating and are simply better than me. 3. No need to resort to attacking me because you disagree.
      - cgriswald 3y ago
        HN software doesn’t allow downvoting posts that are responses to your own posts. The poster couldn’t have downvoted your post just like you can’t downvote this one.
  - squeaky-clean 3y ago
    This can literally happen to your car if you get a DUI. https://www.floridasafetycouncil.org/ClassName/ignition-interlock-device#:~:text=Requirements%3A,of%20reinstatement%20for%20driver%20license https://www.floridasafetycouncil.org/ClassName/ignition-inte.... And yes, I think that's okay.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      I'm not a murican but I assume that over there it's also legal to drive your car on your property without a license. How can they strip you of that right?
      - filoleg 3y ago
        I think the assumption in that rule is that it applies only to cars that you want to have registered and drive on public roads. Naturally, if you want to drive your car on your own private property, you won’t need a valid registration or license, so it won’t fall under that rule. So no, this law wouldn’t strip your rights to that.
      - jpc0 3y ago
        You are welcome to play CS on your own servers without being in compliance with the EULA, at this point in time you get to do that alone but that will change. Wait that's exactly what you say is wrong?
    - josephcsible 3y ago
      There's a big difference between things I'm okay with as a punishment for being convicted of a felony, and things I'm okay with being imposed by megacorps with zero due process or accountability.
      - filoleg 3y ago
        > punishment for being convicted of a felony For certain traffic violations (including DUI in some states), your car gets impounded and your license taken away on the spot, way before you get your court hearing and get charged with anything.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  > You don’t buy the game but a license to play it. This is such a pedantic argument that misses the point and short circuits the entire discussion. I don't think there's a single reasonable person who mistakenly believes that they're buying the IP itself when they "buy" a game on Steam. Of course it's "just" a license to play it, what's being questioned are the terms of those licenses, both from moral and legal perspective. Most current EULAs boil down to: "We reserve the right to suspend your account and revoke access to the software you paid for for any reason, no refunds". To the best of my knowledge these EULAs haven't been tested in court so they shouldn't be taken at face value. There's a lot of room to balance the rights of customers who should be granted the same rights they would enjoy when buying a physical product, and the practical needs of platforms which need to ensure a fair environment for other players. Should cheaters be allowed to ruin the experience for other players? Obviously not. Should platforms be allowed to permanently ban suspected cheaters without a fair and transparent appeals process and without offering refunds? I don't think so.
- aprdm 3y ago
  Games like Diablo 4 don’t even allow offline playing anymore
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
"muh cheaters" is why Just go back to private servers, no matchmaking, no competitive ranking. And no I haven't played multiplayer since around the time Battlefield 1942 added punkbuster and vote kicking.
dotnet00 3y ago
Doesn't the profile just say how many VAC bans you've received? That's just a statement of fact rather than slander, regardless of fairness of the ban. Overall though, when you make a Steam account, you agree to their terms of service, where you agree not to engage in "modification of content and services" in the context of multiplayer games. You also agree that the owners of the game the modification was made to can report you to Valve, that Valve can put that info on your profile, and that other games can decide to deny you online services for that. You still retain access to offline stuff and any online games which don't care about your VAC bans. It sort of sucks in the sense that sometimes you might not know that something is modifying your game executable, thus getting you a ban, but otherwise a reasonable means of dealing with cheaters.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  The average user is not capable to agree or disagree with such a requirement. Look at this very post: all they did was enable a feature of their GPU driver. And they got branded a cheater by Valve. Sure, Valve promises to make it right this time but how can a user predict what will happen when they update or install software on their machine that happens to step on Valve's toes? And good luck getting anyone to believe you or even look into your case unless the issue affects a ton of players and makes the headlines.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Valve's solution appears to be to have a "trusted mode" which rejects modifications. This is obviously a minimal barrier for malicious code, but it can reject benign code (eg Discord's in game layout). Thus, they expect that the average user is likely to only be running "average" things like Discord and the graphics driver, which should be using the benign way of injecting themselves rather than breaking into trusted mode.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      I don't know how it works in detail, all I know is that they once again banned players for something completely beneign, all the while pretending that they never make mistakes.
Hikikomori 3y ago
Did they force you to go on VACation?
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  No, I don't even play these games competitively. I just care about being able to run what I want on my devices without some company telling me I don't get to do that or else And admittedly their grandstanding of "VAC is always right, we never make mistakes and bans cannot and will not be reversed" hits a nerve, because that is just a blatant lie. They actually banned players for using Windows 7, and now they're doing it again to AMD users. Both were obvious mistakes on their end.
  - Linosaurus 3y ago
    Unfortunately, games involving human reflexes or difficulty-to-see visual clues aren’t very fun against strangers who can run what they want on their devices. Because cheating. I don’t think a good solution exists except to keep those games to locked down consoles only. But maybe a more transparent appeals process could help, even if it gets expensive.
  - n42 3y ago
    An overwhelming number of players who do play these games regularly would not pay for or play them if the vanishing minority of potential users like you who care about hypothetical freedoms had their way.
  - Hikikomori 3y ago
    If you don't trust the anti cheat why would you trust the game? Other people like to play competitive games, do you have another option other than anti cheat? They didn't ban people for using win7, they detected something that ran on win7 only. Where is this grandstanding? They've had false bans before and they reverse false bans now and then no? Usually it's a group that is banned so pretty obvious when a bunch of people starts complaining.
  - ben-schaaf 3y ago
    Afaik you can still run cs if you're vac banned, just not connect to servers with vac enabled (which is the vast majority; nobody wants to play with cheaters).
aeyes 3y ago
The game is free so I guess they can do whatever they want.
angrydev 3y ago
Terms of Service
kube-system 3y ago
What happens in meatspace if you pay a cover charge to enter a place, and then don't follow the rules of the establishment? The same thing, you will be asked to leave, and trespassed if you refuse. Just because you paid to access someone else's servers doesn't mean that you can do anything you want, with no way for the owner of the server to enforce any rules. It works like this with any kind of service on the internet. Games are not any different.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  You're comparing a charge for an one time event versus something that is purported to be perpetual.
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    It's not purported to be perpetual, the EULA is defined as the "subscriber agreement" and it's clearly laid out that violation of anti-cheat protections violates the terms of your game subscription. https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/ https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      It is, though. The steam page tells me I'm buying a game, not renting or licensing it.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  If I pay a lifetime membership fee for a meat space, and they ban me, I expect the lifetime membership fee to be refunded, subject to reasonable prorating, even if they claim I violated their "subscriber agreement". Anything else would seem to me to incentivize banning as many lifetime members as possible before significant consumer retaliation (e.g. maybe we'll just ban the lifetime members with low social clout), to reduce costs and maximize profits.
mdhen 3y ago
Nobody pays for this game. It's free.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Paid VAC protected games exist, and arguably it's worsewl with counter strike: you pay for cosmetics that become worthless one Valve has decided they do not like what you install on your computer.
hypercube33 3y ago
I've had a steam account forever and haven't been banned. that said call of duty appears to ban people running on cloud gaming with no way to contest it so you're out $70+ or more just because your laptop sucks and you're using a streaming service to enjoy your games anywhere. unless games are written from scratch with security around preventing cheating first they are left with grasping for virtual straws at what is an exploit or not. in a lot of cases it's low level drivers that are suspect, game code changing in ram such as by a hook into the code, etc. a few friends and I sat down and pondered what it would take to make a game like quake 2 robust enough and we gave up after deciding it'd be a ground up rewrite of both the client and server sides to only send specific data the client needs but no more so even wall hacks don't work and sending encrypted code to run in a VM inside the game from the server and if that memory is touched assume it's kick worthy but even then bit flips can happen etc. Could we trust video drivers from being tweaked to show wireframe renders and other things like that came up. Given this was like 1998 so I'm sure some of this has been implemented these days, I haven't kept a pulse on the tech. I have read that even secure systems such as the PS4 have cheating going on with rooted systems so who even knows.
TheFreim 3y ago
You can still play with a VAC ban, you just can't play on VAC enabled servers. If I remember correctly, in CS:GO there used to be VAC disabled community servers you could play on, though they'd unsurprisingly have an increase in cheaters.

super256 3y ago

You don’t buy the game but a license to play it. You can still play CS after a ban, just not online on their servers or any community servers which block vac banned players. (They killed all community servers two weeks ago btw)

beeboobaa 3y ago
"You can play it except for the game modes people actually care about" Do you also think it's okay if a car that you bought prevents you from driving it, but oh don't worry, it's okay because you're still allowed to open the doors?
- somehnguy 3y ago
  Look, I get where you’re coming from. But ask people who actually play competitive online games and I can all but guarantee the general consensus is that anti-cheat is celebrated, not hated. Most people’s complaint with VAC would likely be that it is too lenient or too slow to ban. Some online games don’t have anti-cheat, and they become nothing but a cheating cesspool. Which consequently drives away actual players, and then you have a dead game except for essentially bots.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    That's the same argument as "but think of the children". Are you also fine with CSAM scanning tools being installed everywhere? It's okay to have a bunch of false positives that potentially ruin people just in case you can also catch a bad apple?
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      It's not even remotely the same argument as the CSAM one. It's not a human right to play a certain video game.
      - beeboobaa 3y ago
        Neither is owning a phone? What is your point?
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        Because if you do own a phone then it becomes your property and the manufacturer shouldn't be allowed to invade the privacy of your data on your phone, but CS is free to play, it's not your property, it's Valve's property, and Valve is allowed to allow or ban whoever they want on it, you don't have a constitutional right to be allowed to paly CS without Valve's permission.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      > Are you also fine with CSAM scanning tools being installed everywhere? No, and neither am I ok with anticheat software doing it. Afaik, most anticheats don’t do that. They just make sure that nothing is modifying/injecting into the game code. Which is imo reasonable, as the anticheat is just monitoring for any injections/modifications to the game that it came with.
  - dbttdft 3y ago
    You argument sounds good to an executive, however, it is simply not the case that games have rampant amount of hacking in general. EDIT: Why would you just downvote this, I already suspected you're one of those idiots who thinks everyone is cheating. Now I'm just convinced, and that's enough of this self masturbating forum for the month. Most cheat accusers in games are literally clueless slobs who just sign on to level up or some idiots in a closed circle of friends and think anyone who doesn't use their basic immediate method of naive play like walking into each other and clicking on each other is cheating.
    - basique 3y ago
      > however, it is simply not the case that games have rampant amount of hacking in general. Have you played TF2 recently?
    - somehnguy 3y ago
      > however, it is simply not the case that games have rampant amount of hacking in general. Yes, many do. Especially ones with poor anti-cheat, which tend not to be very popular - because of the aforementioned cheating. Even non-overly competitive games are rampant with cheating, take a look at GTA5 online for an easy example. Without VAC games like the counter-strike series would be completely unplayable, I have over 1000 hours in the game and have ran into my fair share of extremely obvious cheaters over the years. I suspect you don't play competitive games very much if that's your view on the matter. > Why would you just downvote this, I already suspected you're one of those idiots who thinks everyone is cheating. 1. I can't downvote you, as you're a reply to my comment. Not that I would have anyway. 2. I've never cheated in an online game (my Steam account is 17 years old..), and I'm well aware that many players are not cheating and are simply better than me. 3. No need to resort to attacking me because you disagree.
    - cgriswald 3y ago
      HN software doesn’t allow downvoting posts that are responses to your own posts. The poster couldn’t have downvoted your post just like you can’t downvote this one.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  This can literally happen to your car if you get a DUI. https://www.floridasafetycouncil.org/ClassName/ignition-interlock-device#:~:text=Requirements%3A,of%20reinstatement%20for%20driver%20license https://www.floridasafetycouncil.org/ClassName/ignition-inte.... And yes, I think that's okay.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    I'm not a murican but I assume that over there it's also legal to drive your car on your property without a license. How can they strip you of that right?
    - filoleg 3y ago
      I think the assumption in that rule is that it applies only to cars that you want to have registered and drive on public roads. Naturally, if you want to drive your car on your own private property, you won’t need a valid registration or license, so it won’t fall under that rule. So no, this law wouldn’t strip your rights to that.
    - jpc0 3y ago
      You are welcome to play CS on your own servers without being in compliance with the EULA, at this point in time you get to do that alone but that will change. Wait that's exactly what you say is wrong?
  - josephcsible 3y ago
    There's a big difference between things I'm okay with as a punishment for being convicted of a felony, and things I'm okay with being imposed by megacorps with zero due process or accountability.
    - filoleg 3y ago
      > punishment for being convicted of a felony For certain traffic violations (including DUI in some states), your car gets impounded and your license taken away on the spot, way before you get your court hearing and get charged with anything.
dns_snek 3y ago
> You don’t buy the game but a license to play it. This is such a pedantic argument that misses the point and short circuits the entire discussion. I don't think there's a single reasonable person who mistakenly believes that they're buying the IP itself when they "buy" a game on Steam. Of course it's "just" a license to play it, what's being questioned are the terms of those licenses, both from moral and legal perspective. Most current EULAs boil down to: "We reserve the right to suspend your account and revoke access to the software you paid for for any reason, no refunds". To the best of my knowledge these EULAs haven't been tested in court so they shouldn't be taken at face value. There's a lot of room to balance the rights of customers who should be granted the same rights they would enjoy when buying a physical product, and the practical needs of platforms which need to ensure a fair environment for other players. Should cheaters be allowed to ruin the experience for other players? Obviously not. Should platforms be allowed to permanently ban suspected cheaters without a fair and transparent appeals process and without offering refunds? I don't think so.
aprdm 3y ago
Games like Diablo 4 don’t even allow offline playing anymore

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago

"muh cheaters" is why Just go back to private servers, no matchmaking, no competitive ranking. And no I haven't played multiplayer since around the time Battlefield 1942 added punkbuster and vote kicking.

dotnet00 3y ago

Doesn't the profile just say how many VAC bans you've received? That's just a statement of fact rather than slander, regardless of fairness of the ban. Overall though, when you make a Steam account, you agree to their terms of service, where you agree not to engage in "modification of content and services" in the context of multiplayer games. You also agree that the owners of the game the modification was made to can report you to Valve, that Valve can put that info on your profile, and that other games can decide to deny you online services for that. You still retain access to offline stuff and any online games which don't care about your VAC bans. It sort of sucks in the sense that sometimes you might not know that something is modifying your game executable, thus getting you a ban, but otherwise a reasonable means of dealing with cheaters.

beeboobaa 3y ago
The average user is not capable to agree or disagree with such a requirement. Look at this very post: all they did was enable a feature of their GPU driver. And they got branded a cheater by Valve. Sure, Valve promises to make it right this time but how can a user predict what will happen when they update or install software on their machine that happens to step on Valve's toes? And good luck getting anyone to believe you or even look into your case unless the issue affects a ton of players and makes the headlines.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Valve's solution appears to be to have a "trusted mode" which rejects modifications. This is obviously a minimal barrier for malicious code, but it can reject benign code (eg Discord's in game layout). Thus, they expect that the average user is likely to only be running "average" things like Discord and the graphics driver, which should be using the benign way of injecting themselves rather than breaking into trusted mode.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    I don't know how it works in detail, all I know is that they once again banned players for something completely beneign, all the while pretending that they never make mistakes.

Hikikomori 3y ago

Did they force you to go on VACation?

beeboobaa 3y ago
No, I don't even play these games competitively. I just care about being able to run what I want on my devices without some company telling me I don't get to do that or else And admittedly their grandstanding of "VAC is always right, we never make mistakes and bans cannot and will not be reversed" hits a nerve, because that is just a blatant lie. They actually banned players for using Windows 7, and now they're doing it again to AMD users. Both were obvious mistakes on their end.
- Linosaurus 3y ago
  Unfortunately, games involving human reflexes or difficulty-to-see visual clues aren’t very fun against strangers who can run what they want on their devices. Because cheating. I don’t think a good solution exists except to keep those games to locked down consoles only. But maybe a more transparent appeals process could help, even if it gets expensive.
- n42 3y ago
  An overwhelming number of players who do play these games regularly would not pay for or play them if the vanishing minority of potential users like you who care about hypothetical freedoms had their way.
- Hikikomori 3y ago
  If you don't trust the anti cheat why would you trust the game? Other people like to play competitive games, do you have another option other than anti cheat? They didn't ban people for using win7, they detected something that ran on win7 only. Where is this grandstanding? They've had false bans before and they reverse false bans now and then no? Usually it's a group that is banned so pretty obvious when a bunch of people starts complaining.
- ben-schaaf 3y ago
  Afaik you can still run cs if you're vac banned, just not connect to servers with vac enabled (which is the vast majority; nobody wants to play with cheaters).

aeyes 3y ago

The game is free so I guess they can do whatever they want.

angrydev 3y ago

kube-system 3y ago

What happens in meatspace if you pay a cover charge to enter a place, and then don't follow the rules of the establishment? The same thing, you will be asked to leave, and trespassed if you refuse. Just because you paid to access someone else's servers doesn't mean that you can do anything you want, with no way for the owner of the server to enforce any rules. It works like this with any kind of service on the internet. Games are not any different.

beeboobaa 3y ago
You're comparing a charge for an one time event versus something that is purported to be perpetual.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  It's not purported to be perpetual, the EULA is defined as the "subscriber agreement" and it's clearly laid out that violation of anti-cheat protections violates the terms of your game subscription. https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/ https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    It is, though. The steam page tells me I'm buying a game, not renting or licensing it.
ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
If I pay a lifetime membership fee for a meat space, and they ban me, I expect the lifetime membership fee to be refunded, subject to reasonable prorating, even if they claim I violated their "subscriber agreement". Anything else would seem to me to incentivize banning as many lifetime members as possible before significant consumer retaliation (e.g. maybe we'll just ban the lifetime members with low social clout), to reduce costs and maximize profits.

mdhen 3y ago

Nobody pays for this game. It's free.

beeboobaa 3y ago
Paid VAC protected games exist, and arguably it's worsewl with counter strike: you pay for cosmetics that become worthless one Valve has decided they do not like what you install on your computer.

hypercube33 3y ago

I've had a steam account forever and haven't been banned. that said call of duty appears to ban people running on cloud gaming with no way to contest it so you're out $70+ or more just because your laptop sucks and you're using a streaming service to enjoy your games anywhere. unless games are written from scratch with security around preventing cheating first they are left with grasping for virtual straws at what is an exploit or not. in a lot of cases it's low level drivers that are suspect, game code changing in ram such as by a hook into the code, etc. a few friends and I sat down and pondered what it would take to make a game like quake 2 robust enough and we gave up after deciding it'd be a ground up rewrite of both the client and server sides to only send specific data the client needs but no more so even wall hacks don't work and sending encrypted code to run in a VM inside the game from the server and if that memory is touched assume it's kick worthy but even then bit flips can happen etc. Could we trust video drivers from being tweaked to show wireframe renders and other things like that came up. Given this was like 1998 so I'm sure some of this has been implemented these days, I haven't kept a pulse on the tech. I have read that even secure systems such as the PS4 have cheating going on with rooted systems so who even knows.

TheFreim 3y ago

You can still play with a VAC ban, you just can't play on VAC enabled servers. If I remember correctly, in CS:GO there used to be VAC disabled community servers you could play on, though they'd unsurprisingly have an increase in cheaters.