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VAC banned by a Valve employee?

A Facepunch Studios forums user claims that he was banned by a Valve Employee for using a SourceMod plugin to activate some console cvars in the game itself (if you don’t know what SourceMod is it’s basically a plugin that’s being used on 99% of Source Engine games, you can do a lot of kinky stuff if you have admin rights and proper plugins…).

Anyway here’s this guy’s post:

I was using the speedhacking exploit with sourcemod on a random TF2 server. This guy http://steamcommunity.com/id/professorfarnsworth/ was there, and someone said “Al, don’t you work for valve? can’t you ban this guy?” and he said “yeah, hold on” and I figured they were just trying to scare me into leaving, and he went in spectate. Then about 5 mins later he came back and said “There, I got him banned, just wait a few mins” and I said “Vac bans take weeks.” and someone else said “I thought they take months?” and then I suddenly was kicked from the server with the VAC popup thing saying that this is a secure server and i’ve been previously banned for acheating infraction.

He was in this server: TheMaCHinE.org – Advanced Teamplay [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][HLStatsX]

Does anyone know if they’re allowed to do this? Will a VAC ban like this not get changed just like other VAC bans?

Before you say that I should have gotten banned, this goes against what VAC is designed to do. VAC checks for a program altering the EXE or core DLL files of the game, and then has a delayed ban. There are not supposed to be manual vac bans, I used to believe.

I used a plugin – sourcemod, to make the client think that it is the server and allow certain cvars to be changed, which allowed me to use speedhacks USING CONSOLE COMMANDS and not a third-party program or DLL. This VAC ban was unfair and should not have happened.

Original thread on Facepunch Studios in here.

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16 responses to “VAC banned by a Valve employee?”

  1. SnakekillerX Avatar
    SnakekillerX

    You are pretty retarded if you think cheating via a hacked file is any different than cheating via a plugin and console commands. Cheating is cheating, you were banned. Good luck with that.. ha

    Reply
  2. Trololol Avatar
    Trololol

    “BAWWWWW, I GOT BANNED BY VALVE EMPLOYEE, UNBAN ME OR I LAWLSUIT YOU!!!!!1!!”

    fun-fucking-tastic work valve

    no respect for cheaters

    Reply
  3. Pyro Gourmand Avatar
    Pyro Gourmand

    I think a Steam/Valve employee have the right to do that.

    If (s)he abuses his power, (s)he can get fired, and the company can (its not forced to) repair the prejudices. That’s it.

    Millions of accounts were and are banned on MMORPGs by the studio employees, despite all the time and money spent on the game by the banned, “it’s ALL THERE, BLACK AND WHITE, CLEAR AS CRYSTAL” (:D), they signed the EULA, they have to respect it.

    ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDEdKzAZgko :D )

    If they decide to not respect it, the anti-cheating software, the company, itself or one of its employee, a third party anti-cheating company employed by the game’s company (like Punkbuster), can ban the player from the game.

    Note : employees acts in the name of the company in their mission to prevent cheating on their games.

    The player sign a contract, granting him a limited license, he NEVER “buy the game”, he only get a license.

    If one of the parties doesn’t respect these contract agreements, the other parties (developers, publishers) can revoke the contract without a warning notice, it’s all there, in the EULA contract.

    Yea, I know it’s a totally unbalanced contract, every time I can speak up against abusive EULA and support the other licenses projects I do it (GNU/GPL, CC, etc…), but it’s the contract we accept to sign, we’re not forced to sign it (it’s only entertainment after all).

    – – –

    Of course I hope the VAC bans have meta-datas about the bans and can perfectly know who banned which Steam ID, when, and for which reasons.

    If there is an abuse, the VAC bans could be revoked (they say “WE CANT UNDO BANS”, because they don’t want to deal with millions of cheaters’ requests) and the employee could be fired or at least get his/her VAC power revoked.

    Also, in this case the guy who cheated had an advanced understanding of how cheating and VAC works and was cheating while perfectly knowing VAC could NOT detect him (sourcemod exploit, not a 3rd party plugins), he was abusing the weakness of the anti-cheating program to gain an unfair advantage over the other players, the Steam employee did not took over the VAC role.

    In fact, he exceptionally used his powers, as a representative of Steam, to revoke the VAC part of the cheater’s license, only because the VAC system could not detect and ban him in any way, only because the most probable consequences would be an inevitably ruined online experience for other players, which would be a clear damage for all the players who bought the game for a cheater-free online experience, and a damage for the company too, as its economic viability is strongly linked with the online experience it’s offering as a service.

    “Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others”, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789.

    – – –

    People think cheating/anti-cheating war is or should be like justice, but that’s not the case.

    First, the people who lost several hours of enjoyable game because of the cheaters never get anything, there’s a damage and nothing is done to repair that : no free items, no points, no credits to buy games/monthly fee (mmorpg), no real-moneyz.

    Second, the cheater didn’t respected the contract and he didn’t had to pay anything to repair the game company for the damages (s)he done to the online experience service !

    And, the game company do not have the right to refuse the cheater, to prevent him/her from signing the same contract with the cheater : he can buy a new copy and start cheating again, and again, and again…

    Where is the damn justice ?

    And you can’t bring each cheating player to an e-court, with appealing and all the basic rights ! Even if you put the giant costs aside, you’ll have to (at least) prevent cheaters from buying a new game once they are banned to make a “banned pool”, to avoid having to judge the same person for the same crime billions of times, but that would be illegal and abusive in real life (in my opinion).

    Team Fortress 2 cost 20 bucks. One license per month is affordable for a lot of people.

    Also, VAC ban doesn’t cover the non-VAC servers.

    Final words : If there are abuses of power, and it’s only a matter of time, Steam will have to make the right decision to prevent such illegitimate bans. If not, less people will buy and play Steam games, as simple as that.

    Reply
  4. slay Avatar
    slay

    Gourmand, You are right, but I think that this posts purpose was to ask, is it okay that steam employer can do it manually?

    I personally think that it is something like “notice and takedown”.

    Let’s say that if I am a spammer and when I try to post here viagra and cialis or whatever links, the post won’t go through, because of spam protection.
    But when I am not spammer, if I am just aggressive moron and call up everybody to kill jews or other that kinda crap, then my post will be removed afterwards, manually.

    Reply
  5. Pyro Gourmand Avatar
    Pyro Gourmand

    I read few pages of the thread, apparently Jag was crying because he was “only” using an exploit in sourcemod plugin, and the fact the Valve employee *maybe* couldn’t know if the guy was the admin of the server or not, if the server had sourcemod or not. Crying about getting your bottom kicked by the Punisher on FP, best idea ever sure :D

    Some other posters showed you can have a speedhack (or even a wallhack) with a “simple” exploit of sourcemod, it seems pretty common.

    Elbart nailed it down : VAC ban is not limited to 3rd party program or modified core executable files.

    Reply
  6. Pyro Gourmand Avatar
    Pyro Gourmand

    That guy should have read the Steam Subscriber Agreement and the TF2 EULA twice before cheating on a server…

    VALVe owns the right on its game, if VALVe doesn’t you want to f*** with its game, obey or gtfo, that’s common sense.

    It’s like a guy saying :
    “Okay I stole 10 millions dollars from hundreds of people, but the law doesn’t say it was forbidden to do this online”, stupid moron, you don’t need a law for every single specific crimes.

    Also, VALVe is not a state with laws and Constitution, it’s a damn company, they do what they want, the market/consumers punish them if they fail.

    Reply
  7. sirdorius Avatar
    sirdorius

    Stupid cheaters demanding rights. It doesn’t matter if it’s called a VAT ban or a Y ban. The important part of those 2 words is the part, and he deserved it.
    Why is this a big deal?

    Reply
  8. zelectec Avatar
    zelectec

    haha ….this stupid guy dont know anything about tf2. guys im proud to present the BAN-HAMMER!! http://www.tf2items.com/profiles/76561197960287930
    so nice ….no fake…robin walker on top of the list is the tf2 creator.

    Reply
  9. Sole Avatar
    Sole

    Cheating by bypassing the anti-cheat system is still cheating. I don’t care if anti cheat is enforced manually or automatically. I fail to feel sorry for the guy.

    Reply
  10. raipekass Avatar
    raipekass

    Go to f***ing court cheater and demand your rights.

    Nice job Valve!

    Reply
  11. stranded Avatar
    stranded

    @enticore I’ve fixed the question

    Reply
  12. peterpan223 Avatar
    peterpan223

    Uh just an attention seeker most likely. Over at a hacking site (EnhancedAim.com) there was a Steam usergroup for it. It got shut down with over 30 members (Correct me if I’m wrong.) and as it seems none of them got banned.

    Reply
  13. Dragoon Avatar
    Dragoon

    lol, owned :D

    Reply
  14. enticore Avatar
    enticore

    “Do you think Valve can manually VAC ban accounts?”
    Can as in “has the ability to” or as in “is allowed to”?

    Reply
  15. Elbart Avatar
    Elbart

    “The VAC system reliably detects cheats using their cheat signatures. Any third-party modification to a game designed to give one player an advantage over another is classified as a cheat or hack and will trigger a VAC ban. ___This includes___ modifications to a game’s core executable files and dynamic link libraries.”

    Emphasis by me. It includes modification of game files, but is not limited to.
    The cheater got what he deserved, boohoo.

    Reply
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