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Valve is now reversing VAC bans due to AMD drivers in CS2, according to patch notes

Counter-Strike 2 - Release Notes for 10/19/2023 - Steam News

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/730/view/3717217413231124446?l=english

Added a startup check for incompatible AMD graphics drivers. We will now begin reversing VAC bans for affected players Fixed a bug in Windows 11 Auto HDR that led to smokes intermittently disappearing Miscellaneous bug fixes

Counter-Strike 2 - Release Notes for 10/19/2023 - Steam News

Recently there was a thing where VAC would erroneously flag AMD's antilag+ feature as cheating, and issue a ban.

AMD then quickly disabled the feature by default but now Valve also patched detection for it and is now, at least according to these patch notes, reversing the bans.

53 comments

ChaoticEntropy

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erroneously flag

They were legitimately picking up an activity that they generally try to prevent. AMD was using a technique to apply Anti-Lag+ that was expressly monitored for, to provide anti-cheat.

leave_it_blank

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The creepy thing is there is a possibility you can loose everything you bought in the worst case, maybe forever, without you being at fault. This time it ended ok, but who knows what's on the horizon.

With GOG I have all my games backed up thanks to DRM free policy, but with Steam...

DV8

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Vac bans mean you can't play on vac secured servers. Nothing happens to your other games. For a competitive multiplayer game some anticheat detection is wanted. People changing their dll's to gain a competitive advantage is cheating. AMD making and distributing this unintentional cheat doesn't change that.

I agree that buying directly or through GoG and backing up your games is the best thing to do. But this incident isn't really related to that.

Xatolos

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DV8

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Sure, my comment is directly aimed at a comment stating Valve would basically brick your steam account for this, though. It's disinformation I've seen at too many places this week or oddly enough. While Valve as the CS2 publisher preemptively told players they would unban people once their dlls were normal again.

oldGregg

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3ntranced

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Trade bans scare me. With thousands of dollars of virtual skins, if you get banned, you can't sell anything.

Cannacheques

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Nah but valve is huge and they're a big community host so to speak, getting kicked or locked out would be like getting blacklisted from visiting the USA simply because your last name is Hitler

TwanHE

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Wrong analogy. There is nothing preventing you from just making another account.

PixxlMan

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By that logic buying a better pc is cheating because it gives you an advantage. We need some nuance here. All modifications to game files are not cheating, (even if not allowed in any case), because well, not all modifications are cheats. This is a great example actually, because AMD sanctioned, graphics card driver latency reduction isn't a cheat. Obviously the way it was implemented was clearly very problematic and should've never been greenlit.

However, this isn't an unintentional cheat and detecting it as such is incorrect. It is, however, a modification and those are reasonably disallowed, it is totally fair to disallow that.

berg

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I think a VAC ban only bans you from that one game, at most from other games with VAC. I got VAC banned in modern warfare 2 10+ years ago, but it hasn't had an impact on my account/other games. More than a notice on my profile that it happened.

... just to add, the ban was justified. I went into a game and just held down the shoot button with a plethora of cheats on to see what it was like. It took all the fun out of it and cost me a game I liked. Not recommended. : )

Hunter2

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Yeah, nowadays I think it only affects that game, but older valve titles handed out instant bans on othet titles that used the same engine.

Cheating in one of the following Source games or a Source mod will result in a VAC ban for all games in the list below: Counter-Strike: Source Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Day of Defeat: Source Team Fortress 2

Similarly, cheating in one of the following Gold Source games will result in a VAC ban for all games in the list below:

Counter-Strike Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Ricochet Day of Defeat Team Fortress Classic Half-Life: Deathmatch Deathmatch Classic

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/647C-5CC1-7EA9-3C29#application

Maalus

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Depends on the game iirc. If you get banned in a Valve game, you don't get to play multiplayer in any Valve game.

emzili

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It's more complicated than that, VAC bans are tied to the version of game engine used. So a VAC ban in Counter Strike Source would have also banned you from TF2, DoDS, and HL2DM, and nothing else. This also means that VAC bans from CSGO don't affect any other games (except CS2 which is technically the same game)

BirdyBoogleBop

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If there is a VAC ban on your account that people can look up servers on other games might ban you as well.

berg

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Sure, there's a possibility. But since it hasn't happened in 10+ years I doubt it's a problem.

BirdyBoogleBop

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My friend can't play Hell Let Loose because of a game ban on a completely different game. Different anticheat, and different publisher. So. I would be shocked if a VAC ban wouldn't cause the same issues.

beefcat

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anti-cheat and drm aren’t the same thing

complain all you want about anti-cheat, i would rather play a game that has it than one that does not

Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug

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A VAC ban is only for online games that use VAC, and even then I think they can still use community servers.

It doesn't lock you out of your account or anything.

BirdyBoogleBop

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Unless they are VAC secured

Even if it's an entirely different game by a duuferent publisher, you might get premtively banned from playing because the ban is visible on your account.

Kecessa

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A good time to share this:

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

lud

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And to be clear, that list is far from complete.

There are loads of steam games without DRM and those that use DRM mostly use the Steam provided one that sucks if one actually wants to crack it. It basically only protects against casual copy attempts.

Kecessa

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Still gives a good idea of the proportions though and I'm willing to bet that most of the Steam games missing are shovelwares that no one ever installed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/17/nearly-37-of-all-registered-steam-games-have-never-been-played/?sh=699792182146

leave_it_blank

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That's extremely interesting, thank you!!

Nowadays the only platform I buy my games from is gog, I made the right choice it seems.

But people who need to play the newest games don't really have a choice.

Astaroth

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no one needs to play any game

it's just a matter of how willing someone is to compromise on their principles for entertainment

leave_it_blank

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When I was a teenager I played the newest games too, so I won't judge. Privilege of the young. Today my time is scarce, so I have the luxury of carefully choosing my titles, and I choose DRM free. But back then I would have "needed" to play the newest Assassin's Creed.

Magrath

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Happened to me on Apex Legends. Played the game on and off. Came back on aftrr a break and found I was banned. Appealled and denied. Forget about the game. Get the itch and try and appeal again. Still banned. Good thing I didn't put any money in to the game. Found out apparently a lot of accounts were compromised at one point and they all got banned. Might be what happened to me but fuck it, not worth my time to convince them.

OrderedChaos

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Happened to me with World of Warcraft. Went on vacation and I was banned when I got back. Put a lot of money into that. Logged in a few years ago and all of account stuff was deleted. Gotta love when you're erroneously targeted.

All I was doing was going to a vender in the wild and buying thread for some silver and then selling for gold on the auction because high level players were lazy and didn't want to go find it. I was low level and had a ton of gold. It was fun. But unfortunately there are people that follow that pattern and are breaking rules. I matched it and got banned.

shasta

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Another tale from the epic of Blizzard is a Shitty Company.

histic

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sorry to break it to you but gog no longer has a no drm policy big example being cyberpunk

leave_it_blank

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I played Cyberpunk and the Add-on directly from the installer without Galaxy and had no problems. What am I missing?

LFR

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I think you have to be logged in in Redlauncher to get some extra stuff (missions, cosmetics, etc.). Also some Twitch exclusive stuff.

echodot

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They weren't erroneously flagging anything. The driver wasn't so much a driver as much as a locally hosted man in the middle attack. It wasn't necessary for the functioning of the graphics card it was literally intercepting commands and altering them, which is exactly what cheating software does.

The only way they could have patched the software to not flag it would have been if AMD had told them in advance of what they were doing. Which I have no idea why they didn't do because it was blatantly obvious this exact issue was going to happen.

Acters

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Devils advocate: they can't always know what their engineers did would interfere with something like anti cheating software because it can honestly not be something they thought about. It is also hard to know if AMD has CS2 in their testing suite.

Realistically, they should have ran some beta testing with consumers or in house. On top of that they should have been more clear with how it worked with the public before releasing this very intrusive mechanism in their drivers.

echodot

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Except that they know how, anti-cheating software works at least a day theoretical level, they know how their software works, they know the thing that their software does is something that cheating software does again at a theoretical level. Just on first principles alone it should have been possible for them to work this out without having to have any expert knowledge or have the game in their testing suite.

That's all forgetting that apparently not a single person in the software department, the management department or the QA department (assuming they have one) apparently knows anything about games development. Really?

histic

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it's really not amds job to know how anti cheat works I'm gonna be honest most software devs probably could give a rats ass how it works the software devs probably were just like this works and isn't causing crashes ship it

TwanHE

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Nah there is no defending amd in this. How would altering game files and rerouting dll's not result in getting a ban from almost any half decent AC.

And yes it is their job to know how games work, they're the ones making drivers for a gaming gpu.

Moneo

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I agree. You don't ship software that alters a competitive game's DLLs without spending 5 minutes to discuss potential side effects. This was a major oversight.

Cannacheques

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Haha, your telling me AMD may need new programmers for their graphics driver implementations?

echodot

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Pretty sure this is just a management issue, as in they they need to be doing some.

arin

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Only the right thing to do

datsritebussy

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People still play this game? I remember it was mostly hackers and some people pretending they were actually having fun while gambling their savings away on those skin sites.

Psythik

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Do "people still play this game." This guy. It's literally the #1 title on Steam

Virkkunen

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CS GO (now CS 2) has constantly been on the top 5 most played steam games globally for a decade now, so yeah, I think people are still playing this game.

kautau

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No it hasn’t. Counter strike 2 is a 2023 release, not CS GO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike_2

SteveTech

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CS2 was released as an update to CSGO, so it's effectively the same game as far as steam charts go.

ChefKalash

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Nobody likes smartasses

PixxlMan

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CS2 is CS:GO 👍

histic

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uhh cs2 is csgo

takeda

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CS 2 came out recently.

histic

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how are you actually this dense

seliaste

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It's really great, has a lot of depth, unfortunately the skin gambling is the worst part. I don't encounter cheaters in my game anymore, and play only with squads of friends and it's definetly my favorite FPS, would recommend to anyone willing to learn a tactical fps

DrDickHandler

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How dense are you?

Cannacheques

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Yeah it's pretty basic tbh I honestly wish that the old school stuff like doom, unreal or quake 3 got more air time, much more potential mods and additional dynamics to add to the fun

Storyteller

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Destraight

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It is a damn shame too, because there are a lot better games than this lazy cosmetic, hacker filled game.