Steam and the VAC system....

[peterb]

Do the CoD games do the same as the source games? If you get banned in one of the games it bans you in all of them (and future ones).

If thats the case then that explains it. He got himself banned in MW2, every time he gets a new game he can play it until it runs a VAC check and then bans him.

Sound right but abit unfair surely? i just spoke to him he is going to buy cod 4 and record it all and only play single player and see if it bans him,

Also i actually got it wrong, it was mw3 he hacked, not mw2 and i know that when he got banned on mw3 he actually got banned on black ops 1 and mw2 aswell at the same time...

It is only really unfair if they have applied a sanction without giving prior notice of the conditions that would result in that sanction - for example in the Terms and Conditions. If he has broken those Ts&Cs, he has no comeback - whether he had 'issues' or not.

I am not a VAC expert but get your friend to open a customer support ticket with Steam and find out why he was banned or any evidence that pointed towards as it is rather strange that he was VAC banned if he really did not cheat or used hack.

This is the only thing he can do. No-one here can resolve that for him (or you) (unless there are any covert steam employees in the community and if there are, they are unlikely to reveal that fact). If he is convinced that he is innocent, and the subject of a mistake, he has to raise the query with Steam.

[razer121]

Cheers ticket is open, tried this with blobs 2 after he was banned on that and they wouldn't give any reason, this time round though im going to push for a reason as it is unfair.

[watercooled]

On the Steam VAC information page: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...7849-RADZ-6869

Excluding the games listed above, VAC bans will only apply to the game the cheat was detected in. For example, a VAC ban in Modern Warfare 2 will not affect Modern Warfare 3.

So, the ban shouldn't carry across. Valve are very secretive about exactly what will cause VAC bans, they won't tell you what got you banned, and IIRC there's a random delay between hack detection and ban enforcement, all in order to make working around it harder.

If it's truly unjustified, definitely send them a ticket - there have been a few occurrences of unfair bans lifted because of false positives. You could also make some noise on the forums, but be prepared for people jumping to conclusions and spamming the thread with hate messages. And yeah I've actually seen that happen with a guy who was wrongly banned, accused of cheating etc, then later unbanned when it was discovered it was a false-positive affecting numerous people. I can't remember exactly what caused it though, IIRC it was either other software on the system or a harmless game mod.

[Jellyfish]

With Steam, i'm not a huge fan of them (i used to like them a bit more) with this whole Vac system, he cheated/hacked before which ofc is bad (&rather silly) but it seems pretty crazy *if* it carries on into every other game. The vac thing really does my head in, as in if a person cheats etc... it can take months to remove this person while they aimbot etc... I haven't played Cod since Cod4 (personally it went majorly downhill from there) with removing dedicated servers/map packs/new version every year etc... i'm going off topic, sorry! Everyone is right, steam support is the only thing you can do& i don't think you will have any luck, they are pretty draconian/automated in regards to anything (refunds, etc...) I have read about people being randomly banned aswell from just playing, who knows! As much as some people disliked punkbuster, i actually preferred it to mandatory Steam&Vac. I will often buy games from GOG, instead of steam, unless it's like £2 or something Apologies for going on!

[Saracen]

I have no time for or sympathy with people that cheat in online games, but the mere fact that Steam can ban people, rendering the games they've bought useless, is one reason why I never have, and never will, have a Steam account, or buy ANY game, bar none, that require it.

Read their T&Cs? Basically, if their software bans someone, their T&Cs say they won't even look at information arguing against it. They are, effectively, judge jury and executioner for games bought that require them, a Star Chamber with no right of appeal, and not even the right to see evidence against you.

The hell with that. No game, to me, is worth putting up with that, on principle.

[Jellyfish]

I completely understand Saracen. I try my best to avoid Steam and wouldn't ever pay full price for a 'rental' as such...I admit i do buy some games if they are cheap enough (like £2 or something) but i must have bought maybe 1 or 2 games in the past year (i think) with them. If i see a good indie bundle i will grab that, but that really depends if its drm free installers (as you say, it's just the principle) My money will go on GOG if i can. It's a shame, because alot of games such as ubisoft etc... i haven't bought due to Uplay (sins creed etc...) Drm i am not a fan of really, but i do crumble sometimes

One thing i'm not great on is games requiring Steam to play (Steamworks) as owning a disc version would be nice (and not a disc with steam on it&a code)

[GeorgeStorm]

As others have said, contact Steam, you shouldn't be getting banned for just playing single player as far as I'm aware.
The VAC system seems pretty good overall, and I know people think Steam is evil, but I haven't seen any times where it's abused its powers, so I'm not too bothered, especially since I'd probably rather get to play some of the games which are only available on Steam and then have them taken away than not get to play them at all

Another recommendation would be playing other games

[watercooled]

I have no time for or sympathy with people that cheat in online games, but the mere fact that Steam can ban people, rendering the games they've bought useless, is one reason why I never have, and never will, have a Steam account, or buy ANY game, bar none, that require it.

Read their T&Cs? Basically, if their software bans someone, their T&Cs say they won't even look at information arguing against it. They are, effectively, judge jury and executioner for games bought that require them, a Star Chamber with no right of appeal, and not even the right to see evidence against you.

The hell with that. No game, to me, is worth putting up with that, on principle.

I'm largely of the same opinion TBH, although I do make exceptions for things like cheap games in sales, but overall I just don't understand this pro-Steam mindset I keep seeing. I mean fair enough I get the simplicity of organising games etc, so were it optional fair enough, but as for people preferring being locked in, to DRM-free? No, don't get it. Steam is DRM, and a fairly restrictive sort at that. People complain about not being able to sell certain console games, other DRM systems, etc then immediately go and buy non-tradeable, play-it-unless-we-see-fit-to-revoke-it, Steam games...

And before anyone says something like that would never happen, you've missed recent news of Steam completely revoking access to an older game, single player and all. And using another DRM platform for comparison, you're out of luck if you have some G4WL games which they haven't bothered to strip of the G4WL shackles before closing down the service.

It's the same with people complaining about Origin/Uplay in another breath. TBH I really can't see much of a difference between them, in terms of negatives, and Steam, but of course Steam gets a free pass because they're this philanthropic company who would never do anything bad, right?

/rant

[Dooms]

And you're out of luck if you have some G4WL games which they haven't bothered to strip of the G4WL shackles before closing down the service.

How is that Steams fault? It's up to either the developer or Microsoft to do that.

[watercooled]

I wasn't blaming Steam, I was comparing it to another DRM system people were 'certain' nothing would happen to.

Edit: Although I could've worded it better, I'll go edit it to make it clearer what I meant.

[shaithis]

I mean fair enough I get the simplicity of organising games etc, so were it optional fair enough, but as for people preferring being locked in, to DRM-free? No, don't get it.

Its a lesser of 2 evils. I would MUCH rather have steam then a "install 2-3 times" DRM and SecuROM etc. Especially when steam offers more than just DRM. It is a CMS and download service. I don't ever need to keep proof of purchase or disks/keys etc. But then as we hear all the time, everyone is different

And before anyone says something like that would never happen, you've missed recent news of Steam completely revoking access to an older game, single player and all.

Wasn't that mis-reported? and the game is still available to play?

It's the same with people complaining about Origin/Uplay in another breath. TBH I really can't see much of a difference between them, in terms of negatives, and Steam, but of course Steam gets a free pass because they're this philanthropic company who would never do anything bad, right?

That's because you obviously don't use them much Origin is a buggy copy of steam (but has come on leaps and bounds), UPlay is just a terrible no-where-near-ready-for-release rip-off that just seems to fail whenever using it's multiplayer functions........myself and several friends always have a horrendous time trying to join each others games.


And to put it all in perspective: I'd rather put up with DRM and CMSes rather then not playing games with my mates.....which is probably the overriding reason why so many people deal with it.

[watercooled]

Lesser of two evils, sure, but I'm saying I'd rather have no restrictions at all. And like I said it's not so much the Steam service I have a problem with as the DRM system, although they generally go hand-in-hand with a few exceptions; IIRC there are a few DRM-free games distributed via Steam, so you can download them then run the exe completely independent of Steam.

I've not heard anything to the contrary about that game, but either way my point still stands as proven by MS - you're relying on a company to continue allowing you to play the game you've paid money for.

I've used Origin plenty to understand it, and Uplay a few times, although admittedly not as much as the other two and I used it independently - I've heard of people having trouble with it when it's run alongside Steam for example i.e. Uplay games sold on Steam. Now you mention it though I've found Uplay's cloud save feature to be a buggy mess when I tested it out of curiosity - luckily I'd backed up my saves beforehand!

Origin though? No problems come to mind at all TBH (like you say it's improved from when it first came out, and TBF I didn't use it all that much just after initial release). Don't get me wrong I'm not saying I like it or prefer it, just I really don't see it as any worse than Steam, yet it gets all sorts of hate which Steam seems to be free from. I've had my share of problems with Steam; one somewhat common problem for me and a few friends being losing connection to the Steam servers, which needlessly ejects everyone from online/co-op games for no reason - the game connection is P2P, often by direct IP connection depending on the game, no Steam server involvement, and no reason to eject other than 'oh we can't verify ownership ATM so lets kick everyone to be on the safe side'. People complain about that nonsense on consoles, but Steam gets a free pass again. At least the consoles have an excuse, they rely quite heavily on the servers for setting up games, communication, and so on.

G4WL on the other hand I did find to be a horrid mess which did screw up my saves when I didn't realise they were tied to the *offline* account before formatting and losing account data. I later discovered it's possible to work around that by removing a chunk of the save file in a hex editor to allow saves to be carried across to the Steam versions. I'm not sure if that would've worked for moving saves across G4WL accounts though.

And I don't really know why not having something like Steam would prevent you from playing with mates? We have (and still do) manage fine without any sort of overlay system, whether it's through manual IP connection or just joining the same server. Although like I say I 'get' it in terms of convenience etc, but it doesn't need to act as DRM in order to manage that - it could be optional, like it is for some of those DRM-free games I mentioned earlier.

[directhex]

I have no time for or sympathy with people that cheat in online games, but the mere fact that Steam can ban people, rendering the games they've bought useless, is one reason why I never have, and never will, have a Steam account, or buy ANY game, bar none, that require it.

Read their T&Cs? Basically, if their software bans someone, their T&Cs say they won't even look at information arguing against it. They are, effectively, judge jury and executioner for games bought that require them, a Star Chamber with no right of appeal, and not even the right to see evidence against you.

The hell with that. No game, to me, is worth putting up with that, on principle.

How do you have it both ways, though?

Either cheaters can be punished, or they can't.

[Dooms]

How do you have it both ways, though?

Either cheaters can be punished, or they can't.

Personally I liked now Max Payne 3 dealt with it. Caught cheating? You can still play online but you can only play with other cheaters!

XBone's reputation system promised a similar thing of if you end up having the reputation of being a dick you could only play with other dicks but that hasn't really happened from what I can see.

[kalniel]

XBone's reputation system promised a similar thing of if you end up having the reputation of being a dick you could only play with other dicks but that hasn't really happened from what I can see.

There's an obvious come-back to that quote I'll leave you to work out

[Dooms]

There's an obvious come-back to that quote I'll leave you to work out

lmao. Oops.