Valve Anti-Cheat banned a record setting number of accounts this week

Valve’s anti-cheat countermeasures just bagged their biggest haul ever — almost 100,000 banned in a single week.

The figure comes from SteamDB.info (first spied by PCGamesN) which noted a huge spike in bans this week — more than 61,000 on Thursday, preceded by 28,000 on Wednesday, making the week the most prolific in the history of the Valve Anti-Cheat system.

SteamDB.info

Valve Anti-Cheat has been in service since 2002, beginning with Counter-Strike. More than 300 games are supported (including Valve’s major titles, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2). Who knows what was behind this latest crackdown, but the justice it renders has no appeal. Get banned by VAC and, under Valve’s zero tolerance policy, the account is as good as toast. For that game, at least.

Of note, the ban-wave comes after a week in which players revolted against Splatoon 2’s lack of anti-cheat protections, with one hijacking the game’s leaderboards to send a message to Nintendo to bring in some dang protection. That player was later banned permanently from multiplayer participation.

The subreddit r/VACporn is documenting the lost skins and tenure of bigtime accounts caught in the banwave. Check it out if you’re into schadenfreude over video game cheating.