Everything You Need To Know About Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

[Reav3R]

Greetings,

I'm making this thread in form of a FAQ that represents all the information you need about Valve Anti-Cheat, commonly known as VAC.

1) What does VAC stand for?
VAC stands for Valve Anti-Cheat.

2) What is Valve Anti-Cheat?
Valve Anti-Cheat, abbreviated to VAC, is an anti-cheat solution developed by Valve Corporation as a component of the Steam game development platform, first released with Counter-Strike 1.6 in 2002. During one week of November 2006, the system detected over 10,000 cheating attempts As of 2014, it is estimated that over 1.8 million Steam accounts have been banned by the system, and is used in over 60 games on Steam. [Cite #1]

3) What games does this Anti-Cheat support?
For a full list of games that support VAC, please the appropriate Steam Store Page. Among games that support VAC, Counter-Strike, Call of Duty Series (except Ghosts) and Left 4 Dead Series can be named. All multi-player games released by Valve Software are protected by VAC.

4) How does VAC work?
The software sends client challenges to the machine, if the appropriate response is not received, it is flagged as a possible violation. [Cite #1]

5) For how long do VAC bans last? How can they be removed?
All VAC bans are permanent - Valve has a zero-tolerance policy for cheating and will not lift VAC bans under any circumstances. Once your account has been banned by VAC, it will never be removed again under any circumstances. During its initial release, it only banned players for 24 hours. The duration of the ban was increased over time, players were banned for 1 year and 5 years, until 2005 when any new bans became permanent. [Cite #1]

6) What programs can trigger a VAC ban?
Any third-party modification to a game designed to give one player an advantage over another is classified as a cheat or hack and will trigger a VAC ban. This includes modifications to a game's core executable files and dynamic link libraries. [Cite #1]

7) Can I report a cheater and get him banned by VAC?
While you can do this, VAC is a completely automated system and does not require reports to ban cheaters. Contrary to popular belief, VAC bans can be manually applied but only a single instance of this has been ever recorded. [Cite #1] [Cite #2]

9) Has anyone with a VAC ban ever been unbanned?
Yes, but only because they were truly innocent and the mistake was on Valve's side. It has only happened 6 times so far. [Cite #1]

10) How can I disable VAC without triggering a ban?
This is most likely not possible, there is no such software or hack that allows you to this which is also completely safe. Most of the hacks that claim to disable or bypass VAC are either viruses and trojan, or they result in a VAC ban themselves. They only way to cheat without getting VAC banned is playing on insecure (not VAC protected) servers. You can do this by adding -insecure to your launch options (GoldSrc & Source Engine only).

11) Why aren't cheaters instantly banned? What is the purpose of delayed bans?
If VAC were to instantly ban a cheater after detecting, that would send an outright red flag to hack developers, which would ultimately render the system ineffective. Once a cheat has been detected, the Steam account would get flagged for a ban that would occur from a few days to a few months later. This way, hack developers can't know whether their hack could be detected by VAC or not.

Best Regards,
Reav3R

[Gamerdog6482]

Something else that needs to be said:

VAC CAN AND DOES DETECT NON GAME-ALTERING PROGRAMS

I see WAY too many misconceptions about this. It seems to be up to the game developer on whether or not they ban for it but Vac DOES detect programs that don't directly access the game data. Things like anti-recoil mousescripts or AHK rapid fires are absolutely detectable and will get you banned if you use them for long enough.

[FriedChicken12]

What about color aimbots?

[Gamerdog6482]

What about color aimbots?

As a general rule, if the colorhack itself isn't detected it's unlikely the colorbot will. But, of course, every game is different and no hack is truly undetectable.

[katetem]

What if we DDoS down the VAC contacting server & their database? It is possible to get us a temp unban?

[Gamerdog6482]

What if we DDoS down the VAC contacting server & their database? It is possible to get us a temp unban?

.......wat

[059]

4) How does VAC work?
The software sends client challenges to the machine, if the appropriate response is not received, it is flagged as a possible violation. [Cite #1]

This may be dumb, but what if you had a second copy of the game running that was unmodified, and made vac only challenge that?

[Gamerdog6482]

This may be dumb, but what if you had a second copy of the game running that was unmodified, and made vac only challenge that?

Unless you can somehow show up as invisible in the game, VAC will challenge you. If you have two copies running, VAC will just challenge you twice (not to mention that Steam doesn't allow two games open at once).

[059]

Unless you can somehow show up as invisible in the game, VAC will challenge you. If you have two copies running, VAC will just challenge you twice (not to mention that Steam doesn't allow two games open at once).

Ok, what about this, somehow have a fake client running and whenever the vac server sends you a challenge, you direct it to the fake one instead?

[Gamerdog6482]

Ok, what about this, somehow have a fake client running and whenever the vac server sends you a challenge, you direct it to the fake one instead?

That sounds like an extremely complex measure, and also "VAC redirects" historically don't work.

[leyhorse]

Thanks for the extra info, I got one VAC ban on my account so I'm gonna stay at that

[Pepsi Cola]

Sticky Worth? @Symmetrical @Antipathy @Lonesome Cowboy

[Lonesome Cowboy]

Sticky Worth? @Symmetrical @Antipathy @Lonesome Cowboy

Stickied!