Valve Anti-Cheat's “permanent” Bans Now Have One Major Exception

If you know just one thing about Valve’s Anti-Cheat system (VAC), you probably know that a ban issued through it lasts forever. As Valve’s support page lays out clearly, “VAC bans are permanent, non-negotiable, and cannot be removed by Steam Support.”

Now, apparently, there is one sizable exception to this rule, at least when it comes to esports. A post to the Counter-Strike: GO blog yesterday notes that some VAC-banned players will now be able to participate in events surrounding the game’s next Regional Major Rankings (RMR) season.

The CS:GO team notes in the post that its event guidelines were initially written around the game’s 2012 release, when “all CS:GO VAC bans were relatively recent.” Now, though, the team has decided to update those guidelines to reflect the fact that “VAC bans can now be more than eight years old.” As such, VAC bans older than five years, as well as VAC bans that pre-date a player’s first participation in a Valve-sponsored event, will no longer be taken into account when assessing RMR event eligibility.

That’s a pretty big change for a system whose defining feature is consequences that are supposed to be “permanent” and “non-negotiable.” And those other VAC consequences—including loss of access to all VAC-protected multiplayer servers, achievements, tradable vanity items, etc.—will still remain in place. “The only change is how they influence your eligibility to play in Valve-sponsored events,” the blog post notes. [Update: This section originally suggested VAC banned players lost all access to their game library. Ars regrets the error.]

Cheater bygones?

For years now, Valve’s zero-tolerance approach to VAC enforcement has suggested how seriously it takes evidence of cheating in the hundreds of games that use the system. One verified cheating infraction was enough to ruin your in-game credibility across Steam forever, with no exceptions even considered by Valve’s enforcement team.

When it comes to CS:GO esports, though, Valve apparently now thinks suitably old evidence of cheating should be considered as some sort of youthful indiscretion that shouldn’t be held against current players. It’s a surprisingly stark and specific carve-out for a policy that was previously inviolable.