obscure facts & nuances about VAC in TF2
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
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hey, this video is weird, because it's basically a VAC PSA i wanted to make. i saw lots of claims about how VAC works circulating online with zero proof, so i decided to go confirm for myself what's real or not. i think people probably want to know about what i found? so i'm publishing it here in this video :)
ok
@@JohnPaulBuce ok👍
Love the cintent
@@ral-xk7qb first moment
@@youraveragegamer3439 cintent 💀
This channel’s content feels incomplete without the Gaben talking edit at the end.
The Gaben could not be reached for comment.
*Gaben left the game (VAC banned from secure server*
*)*
No outro is brutal
Yeah I got jump scared by the end of the video
it really felt unfinished. i was thinking he just ended it weird, but it might just be the missing gaben clip
Gaben had nothing to say at the end because Valve won't talk about how VAC works
Hard to talk about how something works when it doesn't.
a defence of that could easily be made. google doesn't talk about how "the algorithm" decides what to promote for the same reason: people would target it in order to exploit the system.
however, while valve is obviously hesitant to discuss specifics, it's not a mystery how vac works in broad terms - and it _does_ work. it's quite good at doing what it was designed for, which is to flag players who have been caught decidedly cheating (via e.g. software signatures) and then ban them at a later point to create uncertainty about what action specifically triggered the ban. it was _not_ designed to counter automated and disposable cheaters, and honestly i'm not sure if anything right now is.
Something that would be really useful to know is if Reporting in TF2 (via clickable scoreboard for example) actually does something, and would it help get a bot VAC banned a bit more “manually”
Reports used to do stuff but now they've been severely diminished because one of the earliest automated bot types was a report bot. What happens if you accumulate enough reports is that you'd get like a 30 day matchmaking ban, and anyone that submitted a report would get a message saying that someone you reported got banned. I haven't seen that message since they changed reporting, unfortunately. Sucks too, because I'd love to see the massive influx of doubletap cheating scouts get curbed a bit, I see that way more than your average normal aimbotter because they think they're subtle
@@OmegaRC59 That's a shame. I wonder if they could have stopped bots by making it so reports from free accounts are weighted much lower/ignored, and made some limit on how many people you can report per time per account.
@@AlexanderRM1000 Basic problem with that. I haven't seen F2P bot accounts in like two years now. Consider these bad actors to essentially have limitless funds, a paywall can't really solve this
@@OmegaRC59 It still works. I've seen it happen recently, I've gotten that message, but since the default settings won't allow you to click on the scoreboard, many people probably just don't know they can report or care to. Making the effort to tell others how to report via scoreboard should be more of a widespread thing.
@@AlyMar1994 guess I'm just really unlucky. I've reported every single one of the doubletapping scouts I've seen in like the last year and never got any notifications
I don't know how to feel about the fact that I've never once, in 10 years of playing this game, seen this VAC ban message, legit or otherwise.
EDIT: To everyone saying that I just wasn't looking at chat and missed them: No, I guarantee you that's not the case.
Lol
Maybe you just forgot. It's very easy to miss
I just saw it today in a hightower server. It was pretty surprising for me, probably one of the few times I’ve seen it.
No way, what servers do you play on?
Do you mainly play on community servers?
I’m writing my senior college seminar paper/presentation about Anticheat. You are cited a couple times; both in this video and one of yours about TF2 bots. Thank you for what you do.
I get to explain hat economy to a bunch of 60-year-old professors. That’s a bingo right off the bat honestly
Which other anti-cheat systems are you writing about?
that's really cool
@@fridgegaming1544 what does hat economy have to do with anticheat measures
What about antianticheat?
I'm surprised you didn't talk about vac banned accounts still being able to connect to valve casual servers under certain circumstances. Doeshotter has made a few videos about it, as well as some other cheaters, and as far as I'm aware it remains unpatched.
i know it's possible but it's not the point of the video. i just wanted to help clarify what is and isn't true to people. it's not meant to go into the rabbit hole of VAC, bypasses, signature checks, whatever
@@shounic well then i guess that's for the next video
@@tfwmemedumpster you shouldn't really discuss and spread the methods.
@@sergeantmemeswaraj7048 no, it works the other way. Exploits are getting fixed much sooner if more people know them. But it can make some damage if the exploit is too global
@@sergeantmemeswaraj7048 most cheater software will have that information or feature there already - plus what the initial reply said
i am awarding you the highest honor i can bestow
*eating food while watching the video*
I remember seeing someone with a game ban back when were still listed as VAC bans, I asked about it and it was a Bad Company 2 ban for "creating a custom server" or something like that.
Now all we need is for VAC to ACTUALLY BAN CHEATERS
I've been seeing a lot of bots getting banned lately, thankfully. There was even a time recently where the servers went down for "reasons" and I came back later in the day to find that every bot joining a game I was in got immediately vac banned, interestingly enough without even having an update to the game
@@OmegaRC59 if it was just a change in the servers, you wouldn't need to update your game. I guess the servers just know how to identify bots more easily now. Even if slightly.
Imagine getting banned before bots crisis while playing MVM Bootcamp as an Engie
It's been improving slowly. Some more prominent bots with identical names have been banned (for example, DoesHotter)
@@JoSephGD i want to do unspeakable things to doeshotter irl
Game bans have way too much power to be abused. If a game has a poor anti-cheat and false flags a player, they're absolutely stuck with that ban, and still have the penalties of a VAC ban on your profile, meaning you can't interact with the workshop and the like. I can't use the workshop in TF2 because of a game ban years ago in 2014 because of the game's poor anti-cheat
I have a friend who got a Game Ban from Black Ops 2 Zombies Mode for glitching out of the map. It really sucks because a lot of Squad servers have a plugin that kick players who have any game bans on record.
Man, that sucks. It's so unfair that individual devs are allowed to come up with their own rules that could completely ruin your steam profile/account forever, possibly through no fault of their own. Volvo, pls fix
@@boldCactuslad fun fact mark on profile disappears after few years, mine is visible only to me when logged in, although still banned
@@eskeletor iirc it takes 7 years for it to be hidden
Wow that's pretty dumb. And considering how game bans aren't validated by Valve or anything, that's really stupid of Squad servers to be doing as well
If you or your friend wants to play CoD Zombies you should look into Plutonium.
Also something worth noting is that, if you have a VAC Ban unrelated to Steam games (Like in my case with MW2), it basically shuts you out of many parts of the Steam Community and Workshop Features, and makes your Account unusuable if you ever want to Publish Skins for CSGO or write reviews or discussions on certain free to play games etc.
Even if you have 3500 days (9.6 Years) spotless on your Account.
And it keeps getting worse and worse over the years.
So don't be suprised if you can't take part in certain parts of the Steam Community or won't be able to in the future.
If you haven't invested much in your Account, just get a new one. Its much more worth it.
Once a cheater always a cheater, you'll either cheat again or dying of old age is the only thing stopping you from cheating again.
@@skylark.kraken Funny thing is I wasn't even cheating but now Im basically screwed if I ever want to do any like that.
I used to be ultra mad about it but well its been over 9 Years now.
Vinci, I have a similar tragic case as you as I posted in another comment thumbed up here. What do you think about a class action lawsuit possibly against Valve?
@@seronymus I don't think that would be actionable, especially since in my case its already over 9 Years old.
I though about sending an E-Mail to Gaben, since I heard he reads his E-Mails and just nicely trying to explain my situation and not ask for anything like an unban or so but rather just that they take another look at how harsh the Community Features get cut or like a recovery system of where you get access to that again after a certain time frame, since they already hide VAC Bans now and also a Hacker will just get a new Account and cheat on there.
Most hackers won't stick 5-10 Years on an Account trying to post something on the community forums or write a review about random free to play games.
Damn I also got vac banned on mw2 sadg
Another thing to note, is that CSGO overwatch bans are marked as game bans only for the first 14 days. After 14 days, the ban turns into a VAC ban.
"Thanks and no fun"
- Gaben in the nonexistent outro
The account I use to play tf2 on is vac banned on csgo and I was surprised when I was able to play tf2 while being vac banned, because I thought it applied to all valve games, being "Valve Anti-Cheat, " but I guess not.
it means a ban with Valve's anti-cheat technology, not an anti-cheat ban on Valve's games.
Cheating on CSGO is sad. Just get more headshots with the deagle loser
Thanks for clearing it up it's been really confusing lately
The sentence "CS:GO has an Overwatch system" will always sound weird to me, even though I know that "overwatch" is a completely normal word
the game ruined the word overwatch and now i associate it with an fps game now 💀
I can't tell if I associate it more with the game Overwatch, or the Combine Overwatch in Half-Life 2.
Could you please make a video on how the eyes of tf2 characters in-game are calculated?
Basically when the game determines your character will look in a certain direction
I live in Valve Headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, US, on the 11th floor.
My name is Valve Anti-Cheat.
I'm 20 years old.
I believe in taking care of myself, in a balanced diet, in a rigorous banning routine.
In the morning, if my players are a actin sussy, I'll put them on a watchlist while doing my stomach crunches.
I can do a thousand now.
After I remove the player, I use a deep-hardware scan cleansing lotion.
In the development main branch, I use a git hub vac leak.
Then a honey-almond bodyscrub.
And on the face, an exfoliating gel-scrub.
Then I apply an herb mint facial masque,
which I leave on for ten minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine.
I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol,
because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older.
Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm, followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.
There is an idea of a Valve Anti-cheat.
Some kind of abstraction, but there is no real Anti-Cheat.
Only an entity-- something illusory.
And though I can hide my drivers under ring 0...
and you can shake my SSH and feel my ping gripping yours...
and maybe you can even sense our life styles are probably comparable,
VAC is simply not there.
Note that game bans have been abused recently by a small number of extremely salty and rude indie developers. Despite owning hundreds of indie games, I have yet to be banned as you can just notice that an indie dev is obviously unhinged and choose to not participate in the community/forums. To any indie dev reading this, I am obviously referring not to you, but to like other devs, or the haters, or something :)
That said, it is a matter of time before an indie dev goes out of his way to ban as many people as possible. I don't expect Valve to ever notice this issue, much less come up with some way to fix it while still allowing for 1-game indie devs to police their communities as required. The customer (Hey, that's us!) just get a flat lose-lose.
@@kimgkomg that's true, but since you can't see what someone was gamebanned for as an outsider, it's as if said indie dev put a shit stain on your Steam profile then taped a fish to it. It's just an automatic 3+ red flags to anyone looking at the profile - people will report you more if they see you've been banned before so you MUST be cheating, in their eyes.
Also, some games have server plugins that a community server admin can install that kicks anyone with game bans, so you're even shut out from some unrelated games/servers.
Here's a fun idea: try to get the most game bans on steam.
@@kimgkomg It actually does. Some games such as Squad has servers with plugins that bans people who has ANY kind of ban history, including game bans. Same can be done in community servers within games like TF2.
So yes, it does have consequences. A game ban can potentially be a permanent "curse" upon your account. Developers and server owners can choose to ban you for simply having a game ban.
I wonder if one of the indie developers you're talking about got banned from their own forums by Valve for being a huge jerk (among other things)?
@@Juuhazan_ Is it also the indie dev who definitely isn't mad?
You know what they say, sometimes a cheater deserves a good VACation.
As someone who’s creating a game for steam with its own online multiplayer system, knowing about this game ban feature could save me hours of time programming an anticheat and or moderation systems. Though notifying valve may take a long time
You might rethink this situation and still consider having some sort of automated system to at least disconnect people if it thinks they are cheating.
Reason is: These game bans are manual. You'd need to personally go out of your way to ban a specific guy.
Now imagine a new hack tool gets released for your game and there's an influx of like 600 cheaters.
Are you really gonna manually ban each?
@@Felix-Felix you have a point but it’s nice to know the option is still there
always wanted to know how VAC worked.
Mr shounic, I was wondering if you maybe educate us comp players on why the first cap on koth either extends spawns, does nothing, or lets you spawn instantly depending on how the stars align. I dont know how many blokes said "the first cap doesn't deny" only to see my respawn timer get extended.
Changing respawn times changes the wave length starting from when the round starts, changing a respawn time in any way whether up or down can result in the current time going up or down just by how the waves realign.
For instance 101 seconds into a game there is a respawn wave time of 10 seconds (it's actually 5 seconds as there are 2 waves and when you die you get put into the longer one, and you'll respawn in 5-10 seconds if there are no changes to times), you have 9 second left (10 - (101 mod 10) = 9) to respawn but the enemy capture the point and the wave time is changed to 12 seconds (actually 6 seconds) and now your timer says 7 seconds (12 - (101 mod 12) = 7).
It's possible for the time to go up with a respawn wave increase (at 48 seconds: 1 second respawn [10s wave] turns into 11 seconds [12s wave]), time to go down with respawn wave decrease (at 145 seconds: 10 seconds respawn [12s wave] turns into 4 seconds [10s wave]), and also time to go up with respawn wave increase (at 70 seconds: 1 second respawn [12s wave] turns into 9 seconds [10s respawn]) - these values do take into account that waves are split into 2
@@skylark.kraken So it's pretty much random in practice, right? That's so dumb.
it took me five minutes to understand that last part of the video,
i really thought you could also get banned in overwatch
I cannot possibly understand how high quality this channels content is.
It's actually exciting to see your videos form a year ago getting fixed. Was this your long time hope?
thank you for giving light to everhood :)
Just so you know, there’s actually a third type of ban that is really only able to be known if you saw the ban within hours of it happening.
Back in 2017/2018, I was a bit of a script kiddie (literally, I was 14) and I received a well deserved ban like this on my main account. If CS:GO’s game specific anti-cheat (not VAC) detects you doing something a normal player can and will never do, it will ban you, giving you a game ban on your profile. Sometime within a day or two, that ban turns into a full VAC ban. Those bans were generally referred to as untrusted bans and normally happen due to poorly coded cheats or injectors.
For the people curious, my ban initially said it was an overwatch ban both in and out of the game.
I don’t know the game’s internal workings well at all but I do know both the experience I had and more so the cheaters I did play with and know well over my 5k hours in the game. I can try to answer other questions about CS:GO cheats in that era of the game for anybody curious.
yeah things like using bad viewangles (yaw outside of -89,89) or fast duck will get you untrusted very fast
@@wheeI Yeah, but I felt that was a bit farther technically than I wanted to try to go. I got banned because the cheat didn’t inject right and I said fuck it and played anyways.
After Valve’s first attempt to kill the time traveling 50 years in the past to sucker-punch your grandfather level of backtrack you also would get it for exceeding the hard cap valve set, iirc
Untrusted bans only apply if you spoof certain cvars or manage to set an invalid/OOB viewangle in CS:GO. TF2 does not have this.
iirc untrusted bans mainly occur if you send data to the server that a legit player can never send, like bad viewangles as another commenter stated. They can also occur if you consistently do shit a player will just never be able to do, example landing 100 consecutive headshots through Dust 2's metal doors.
@@8stormy5 The second one is far less likely because Valve generally doesn’t auto ban based on gameplay alone, instead relying on community input through overwatch. TF2 very likely doesn’t share this same system, but sending blatantly altered and unrealistic requests to the game should cause a similar ban in at least some situations. Given that untrusted bans depend more on the game’s anticheat than detecting malicious activity, there are bound to be differences in what can get you that type of ban.
I just joined a game and then I found a soldier with heavy model. Tf2 being tf2
Thank you for the education.
VAC is another way for valve to mock us.
When the game's anti cheat system is so outdated cheat clients get a more frequent anf better updates
Hey shounic love your stuff. Could you do a video explaining huw the auto balance system actually works since it's something that I've had on my mind for a very long time now. Keep up the great work.
Nice video! I didn' knew about these facts about VAC
you can spot the fake vac ban if you copy the message: you can't spot it by highlighting the text since space character can't be visually highlighted (as i remember), but if you copy this message and paste it in console (as example) you will see either of two things: default VAC ban message or VAC ban message but closing bracket is out of place, this one is fake one
Sweet, that means I saw a real bot getting rejoining and being VAC banned last week, each attempt had the ) on the new line
A bit annoying to have chat spammed with the vac bans, but it's still satisfying to see sweet justice happen. And at least it's not a million blank spaces to clean chat.
Oh it just ends
Uhh…
Good Video! I don’t play tf2 and am probably missing out.
Also didn’t know about that new line thing so that’s cool
~intense breakcore noises~
Zain won shine in the end, you were right!
Back in like 2013 or so, I was disturbed by Steam Guard being introduced and tying my phone number (which I still didn't have anyway as a teen), to my account. So I used a free SMS and program that helped with that on my old PC. Some hacker troll later on used that free SMS to cheat in CS:GO and get a bunch of people VAC banned on purpose. So I got struck for many years now, and tried emailing Valve that I was a dumb poor teen but they refuse to do anything. I hate it so much I have many games on that account and just didn't want to spill my identity then and couldn't anyway :( help
Did you only contact support once?
@@graysongdl Dude as someone with a Vac Ban I've contacted them MULTIPLE times. If I EVER meet a Valve Support person IRL, I'm clocking them in the jaw; that's how useless they are.
@@soundrogue4472 What did you do to get a vac ban in the first place?
Were you in this vid btw? watch?v=8inbMc1o4Lw
LMAO
@@soundrogue4472 calm down
the fact you have an alt that has been vac banned suprises me
you should make a video about the visual bug on lazarus
funny you upload this at the same time as my steam account being fucked by VAC for no reason
you're somebody mysterious
Hey Shounic, do you know that weird glitch (mainly on 2fort), where when you headshot or stab someone there is a chance their model that plays the death animation will teleport to the middle of the bridge and then disappear? Do you think you could explain it?
Maybe it has to do with the glitch in a few source games where the game will occasionally think the player should spawn at the 0, 0, 0 point in Hammer. Valve had to move a CS:GO map away from it because people kept spawning in a wall, I doubt it wouldn't get confused and try to teleport things that are based off of player position (i.e. ragdolls) there as well
Man I wish we had the Overwatch system for TF2.
Accidentaly pressed this, good day to you all
"Thomas has left the server"
Ha bet
I am a simple man,
shounic posts, I click
same
Question, so can vac banned bots grief matchmaking by filling up the queues and being put into matches but never be able to connect? Like just cause a bunch of low population matches since the stoppage is after the matchmaker tells you that this is the server for you to connect to?
Gaben has been VAC-banned from this video.
Cute fluttershy PFP.
Damn that name tho... intense breackcore ni....
shounic i saw a demo doing the high five taunt and apparently his bottle was floating above him idk why items float up is it how they hide the weapons on taunts?
This channel is cool
intense breakcore noises
you can still join casual games with a vac ban on tf2, DoesHotter made a video on it
Thanks man
ive seen one ban message and i dont remember if it was legit, all i know is there was a guy who was banned mid match
oddly relevant considering i had to reinstall windows recently because i kept getting VAC errors
Every game has a least one VAC banned player from what I’ve seen
I'm curious about the VAC bit regarding its message formatting, would it not be possible to simply insert the EOL character that tells chat and other text programs to go to the next line?
TF2 isn't the kind of game I'd expect to have checks in place for newline characters
it does have newline checks as of recently, there's another video about it
The chat prevents you from doing so, along with console commands not allowing it. The only place that allowed newlines was the server itself, it wouldn't validate chat messages for illegal characters. This was patched recently, so not even cheat programs can send newlines in chat anymore. Cheaters used to use this to effectively blank out chat whenever someone would call them out. Unfortunately for them, they're not very bright and just scrolling up in the console would reveal who spammed the newline characters
If you were to go into a server with 5 vac-banned people, and they kept trying to reconnect in order to spam the messages, would they be able to do that indefinitely? And if so, can other players join to fill in their slots while they're spamming the messages?
If not, could this be a way to hog up 5 slots on a single team on casual games?
Don’t let the script kiddies know.
Gabe Newell voice: VAC ban? VAC Ban.
There's ways to brute force and bypass a vac ban to enter a casual match, tho it's hard to do
thanks
Never seen a game ban
Bro, gabe not talking in the end makes something feel missing
VAC is hilariously outdated and bad, though. You can literally join a secure server temporarily while banned by setting fps_max to 1 and using host_timescale (with trial and error).
Better yet, you can just tell it to abort the scan for cheats while playing on an account without a ban on a secure server.
VAC sucks. It needs a massive update for TF2.
I got vac banned for testing a cheat software on an offline map out of curiosity
@Sprout uhuh curiosity sure.
@@machomannco.4569 i mean I've done the same thing, offline lan with a few buddies so we weren't fucking anyone elses day up
@@machomannco.4569 I swear
@@Toro563 cheaters never win
regarding the throwaway's account name, do you listen to real breakcore like venetian snares or whatnot or poser garbage like sewerslvt
the real questions
I only listen harsh japanoise
and why fluttershy?
congrats on 50 million views
nice this might help
Even if the fake VAC ban message works on vanilla HUDs only, or even 1080p only, it would still be used by the bad actors. It will still mess with plenty of people.
1:29
I saw that tging almost everytime i play casual. I hate it.
Gibus Gaming
also you can bypass vac eith this console command before connecting "sv_cheats 1; fps_max 1;host_timescale 100" btw wont work 100% always but it kinda works
Maybe if some of the bots have been vac banned maybe it could also show their address?But it would apply to people who cheated.
hell yeah everhood
wow the stream psa was real
breakcore spotted
I actually have a game ban on my profile, but it says VAC ban for some reason.
"After 9 years of development, we hope you'll get banned" -Gabe
cool!
I'm thankfull it works like that my brother used skin changer on cs go and got banned I would be so mad if I had to make another accout just to play one game
nice pfp lol
"*intense breakcore noises*"
WHAT the two games with the most hackers don't share bans!?
Fun fact: having Cheat Engine open will not get you banned, but the game will disconnect you. Not sure if there's any message.
i wonder what vac stands for
Nice
I agree that everyone should play Everhood
I got a question about 1 thing about tf2 cheaters. I’m not sure if anyone ever asked this question but how are some people not able to be kicked out even tho everyone try’s to call a vote on them?
F2P votes are not considered in votes. If there were 8 yes votes and 4 no votes, but 6 of those yes votes were from F2P's, the vote will fail.
@@lndig0684 it’a something way different but thanks. But what I mean is that when someone tries to call a vote on the person. It literally say’s “You can not call a vote on this player”.
Is it true that the Linux version of VAC literally just doesn't work thats why most bot hosters and cheaters use the Linux version of the game? I've heard it said a few times but dont really believe it to be true.
Its not that the linux version of vac doesnt work, its that vac works by reading the software on your machine and comparing it to known cheats ( basically, theres more i dont know)
But linux and bsd use a unix-like permission system, where the vac program (nor steam nor tf2) is not privileged enough to view the cheat software on your machine.
Cathook for example is run as root, whereas steam is not. And shouldn't be. But this imbalance is why vac is ineffective for linux.
A similar effect happens if tf2 is being run in a vm or hypervisor, and the cheat is run by the host system
Yes
Should CS:GO cheaters be banned from TF2 and vice versa? I feel like that should be the case but maybe there's a point I'm missing. It seems likely that someone hacking in one game wouldn't have problems with ruining matches in the other but idk
Years ago I used to play tf2 a lot, but I also played idle games and I used cheatengine to speed up time in those and forgot to close cheat engine and got vac banned on that account when I opened tf2 lmao
oh shit that might have been what happened to my main account aswell then. shit. ive been using that speedhack aswell, its really convenient in some stuff.
"play everhood"
TRUE, PLAY EVERHOOD RIGHT NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T
Interesting