On August 12th, a huge VAC ban wave was seen hitting Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Thousands of players were banned from the first-person shooter and the VAC ban numbers spiked dramatically in only a span of a couple of hours. However, the number of players who are claiming to have been falsely banned in this recent wave is absurdly high, which has raised the question if there is something inherently wrong with the system itself.
VAC bans, unlike game bans, are automatic and delivered by the anti-cheat system itself. It’s not possible to get a VAC ban from overwatch, which removes the possibility of questionable decisions by overwatchers who can be ranked anywhere from Gold Nova 1 to Global Elite.
What caused all these VAC bans?
Details of Valve’s anti-cheat system are highly confidential and they don’t make their anti-cheat info available to players for obvious reasons. So, it’s quite hard to predict what caused a sudden surge of the number of VAC bans in only a few hours. It may be relevant to the new “Trusted Mode” update which was implemented to the game just a couple of weeks ago. This mode prevents the interaction of most third-party programs with the game, thus reducing the chance of cheat softwares being able to inject itselves into CSGO.
These sort of sudden ban waves aren’t rare. Previously, there have been several instances of similar VAC ban waves where thousands of cheaters got banned in an extremely short time span. However, the amount of players claiming to be banned for seemingly no reason is unprecedented.
Have you been falsely banned?
CSGO players across social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit have been flooding the forums with posts claiming that their account has been falsely banned from the game. What’s even more surprising is that many players are also claiming to have been banned without even accessing CSGO in over a month.
A common aspect in the majority of these false positive bans seem to be an extremely low trust factor, although it is yet unconfirmed. So if you had a red trust factor before the ban wave, better check your account right now.
How to remove the VAC ban?
Unlike overwatch bans, VAC bans are permanent and cannot be removed. However, if a VAC ban is falsely placed, it will automatically be removed by Valve. There have been similar instances of false VAC bans being removed in the past and may happen once again. So if you have a false VAC ban on your account, just sit tight and hope for the best, chances are that it’ll automatically be removed by the devs.
