I think I might have made a big mistake... How does VAC work exactly?

[Tanukitsune]

I got a game called Clickr which I don't think anybody plays since I got first place in some level's leaderboards on my first try...

 

I used a cheat device to get the currency to unlock more levels only to find out later that... it uses VAC? What?!? 

 

How screwed am I? I'm not sure if I'll get banned from ALL games, of only this game? I barely play multiplayer or even games with VAC servers, so on one side it wouldn't be the end of the world...

 

I will be be so upset if I get banned from Steam from a stupid game nobody plays and that isn't very good. 

 

I'm tempted to contact the makers and explain the situation, I really have no idea what to do... I didn't even notice the game had multiplayer... 

[Tanukitsune]

I found out the developer is Korean, so even explaining the situation is going to be complex, it's also distressing me more that I thought.

 

As far as I know I should only get banned if I was playing multiplayer on a VAC server, right? 

 

This really sucks, I rarely cheat and when I do it's to avoid grinding... A part of me thinks I'll be banned from all my Steam games and that I'll never be able to play again, a part of me says the best case scenario is that:

A: Since I wasn't on multiplayer it doesn't count?

B: I only get banned from a game I'd never play anyway.

 

I feel so stupid, like I said, I only cheat to avoid grinding and I'm usually smart enough to check for VAC Shield, but this game looked like a mobile port, so for once I didn't bother. 

[Thrik]

It seems unusual for you to end up in this situation as a result of cheating a single-player game, in my book that's completely acceptable — cheating is only bad when it affects the community at large.

 

Valve has always been pretty vocal about VAC bans being permanent and never lifted, so you might not have much luck getting anything done about it. However, VAC bans are game-specific so long as they aren't Valve games. If they are Valve games, you're banned from all of them.

 

Unfortunately, it does mean that your Steam ID will likely lose that 'in good standing' status.

[Tanukitsune]

Well, the game does have multiplayer, but I didn't even notice it, I just played a few levels, got bored, used the cheat device to buy a skin... and noticed VAC.

 

If it's really game specific, then I guess it's not the end of the world, I'm not sure what the "in good standing" status will do. I won't be taken seriously on the Steam forums? Will nobody buy my trading cards? That might be a problem.

 

I guess the question is, did I access the VAC server somehow even though I never was online? I might have messed up some single player leaderboard, but I'm guessing the VAC only searches for cheat devices while you're playing multiplayer since this is when you're on the VAC server?

 

Why such a game is deserving of one is beyond me...

[eot]

It depends on the game specific implementation of VAC, generally it's only for multiplayer but that's not always true. 'Cheat device' is also a bit too vague, if you just edit a savegame to give yourself credits then VAC won't detect that, it's more for catching people hooking DLLs or editing memory accessed by the game.

[Thrik]

Thinking about it some more, I can see why Steam would ban single-player stuff too. In today's world of leader boards, achievements, gamer points, etc it can definitely cause some issues if people are cheating the system. I can imagine that if you were to somehow use cheat devices on a PlayStation or Xbox your accounts for those things would be at risk, so I guess the same applies to Steam.

 

I'm not entirely comfortable with that, because using trainers and messing around with stuff has been a long-standing PC gaming tradition. Why shouldn't someone unlock everything in The Sims or Skyrim if they really want to? Maybe you should just be opted out of all the community shit for a game if you're detected cheating in the single-player experience rather than given an outright VAC ban.

 

There is a bit of a 'CHEATERS ARE EVIL' thing in the PC world though, mainly because they are a legitimate pain in the ass when it comes to multiplayer games. Unfortunately I think that's resulted in some heavy-handed handling of things like this.

[Twig]

Thinking about it some more, I can see why Steam would ban single-player stuff too. In today's world of leader boards, achievements, gamer points, etc it can definitely cause some issues if people are cheating the system.

Maybe, but then there's the Steam Achievement Manager, which, as far as I know, Valve doesn't really give a damn about. People talk about using it all the time, even on Valve's own forums. All it does is literally just unlock the achievements you choose to unlock.

[elmuerte]

From what I heard is can take days for you VAC status to change. So you better not try anything else and they might let it slide.

Note that the developer using VAC has no control over it. There's no use in explaining it.

[Tanukitsune]

Save game editors are rare and not that easy to use, I used Cheat Engine, which does edits the memory accessed by the game.

 

I remember sometime ago on the GiantBomb cast they said people got banned for cheating on a single player game (Diablo 3, maybe?), but that's different since since you can use that character online.

 

I'm pretty sure I cheated on Skyrim with console commands, most western RPGs have them.

 

Frankly, I have no idea what will happen, but does anybody think I should bother to try to contact the makers of the game? Their page is in Korean. Is it even worth it? :|

 

Seriously, this is kinda messed up, I feel like only five people have played this game since I only seen the same people on the leader boards and I was usually one of them and I suck at this game.

 

From the forums it sounds they have a server for match making, so it's relatively safe to assume I never accessed them?

 

While doing research, apart from the Diablo thing, I've only seen people banned for playing multiplayer with some cheat device on.

 

Oh well, "Alea jacta est", it's too late to do anything now if I really did something that would be bannable.

 

Some to think of it, I might have accidentally even had Cheat Engine running while playing a multiplayer VAC game, but it was messing with something else. I really hope what I did does not count, but I really can't do a thing about it. 

[Thrik]

If you were to contact anyone, it'd be Valve. It's Valve software operated by Valve, the individual developers have no say in anything to do with it. VAC is something that scans for anything fucking with DLLS, memory, etc while it's running, which is how most actual wallhacks and such work — it's not something with specific triggers defined on a game-by-game basis that its developers can control. That's how I understand it, anyway.

[eot]

1. Don't worry about it until you actually get a ban (if you even do).

2. It only affects games on the same engine (sometimes not even those), and even then it only prevents you from playing on VAC secured servers.

 

Even if you get banned it probably won't affect you in any significant way. Afaik the account status thing is only there as a kind of public shaming, it doesn't have any tangible effect.

[Sno]

Cheat engine is definitely supposed to be detected by VAC-secured games, even if it's just running idle in the background i believe, and my understanding is that VAC bans go out in waves, so you'll have to wait a few weeks to see how badly you screwed up.

If you feel like doing some game editing, always check and double check to see if it's VAC secured.

Valve doesn't joke around with their anti-cheat stuff. (They, quite rightly, believe that cheating erodes faith in their network systems and their business models.)

[Tanukitsune]

Weeks? That really sucks.

 

Like I said I always do check, but since was just a simple puzzle game, for once it didn't seem necessary.

[neonrev]

Just out of curiosity, what sort of actions are likely to draw the notice of VAC? I've never tried to actually cheat (or really compete, even) in competitive games, but I certainly enjoy fussing about in game files and such, and never even considered VAC at all. Not worried, just wondering.

[Dewar]

In theory, running any cheating device in memory, used or not, or editing any game files could trigger VAC. In practice, it all seems rather random what gets detected and what doesn't.

[SecretAsianMan]

Is there any kind of warning when VAC detects something or is it one minute you're fine, the next you're banned?

[eot]

There's no detection notice, just a ban notice and those happen in waves afaik. There's also no appeal process or reason given.

[neonrev]

I assume VAC started as an in-house anti-cheat thing for multiplayer modes of early valve stuff, and has since just picked up more and more stuff to do as Valve had more games and started selling other companies games, then became a major retailer for PC game downloads... I really want to see a history of it now, cause balancing trust in the platform as a means for multiplayer stuff and such and trust in the community that VAC isn't going to get a false positive and take down all your games without appeal (which I'd never heard of happening before, is that rare or do I just not hear about it?) for something innocuous sounds fascinating.

[Thrik]

I think that a large part of VAC's effectiveness is that it doesn't make mistakes and its effects are permanent. It makes an excellent deterrent because it renders someone's copy of a game more or less useless if it's multiplayer.

Of course, if it does in fact make mistakes then that's some pretty bad shit. I haven't come across it in my years using Steam (since launch), though.

[Bjorn]

It has had some public false positives over the years, as recently as last month.  These mistakes tend to only become public when a significant number of people are affected by the same issue.  No one has the slightest idea how many small or individual false positives have happened over the years. 

 

Still, stuff like VAC is better than having nothing at all. 

[neonrev]

Yeah, for it to even have that sort of power and for me to only know about it vaguely is a pretty good sign it's doing it's job well. And that failure is interesting, since the CS:GO team would be more in touch with whoever administrates VAC than any other random developer and it looks like that was a server-side problem instead of something a user did, and... yeah. I'm super interested in this all of a sudden, but I don't think I have anything new to say. I just really want a retrospective from whoever manages it telling me how they differentiate between legit and non-legit edits, how monitoring for 'cheating devices' works and also what those even are, and just anecdotes I guess. 

But yeah, it'd suck if 200+ games on steam just went away because I went too far messing with The Guild 2 or whatever, and there was no appeal. There must be a similar system on consoles, but I've never owned one, so I wouldn't really know.

[Dewar]

Your entire Xbox Live account can be banned, killing any games that you have paid for and downloaded, but there is at least an appeals process.

[Sno]

There's no detection notice, just a ban notice and those happen in waves afaik. There's also no appeal process or reason given.

Gabe's talked about how VAC is purposefully obfuscated to make it more difficult for cheaters to circumvent, so there's no clear notice of when you've triggered it, and no clear guidelines available for what triggers it.

If a game is VAC-secured, just don't go poking at it, it's not worth it. It's a scary and complex piece of software, but as one of the few effective anti-cheat mechanisms available on the PC, it's something that's fairly easy to make peace with.

Does Valve have a support forum for contesting VAC bans? I'd hope they do, even if 99% of what goes through it are people who deserved the ban.

[Tanukitsune]

I'd never thought I'd revive this thread, but... yet another TF2 kid bothered me for my TF2 and I don't know how.... saw I had Cheat Engine active... And said he's going to report me for hacking him...

 

I reported him for harassing me and claiming I hacked him... I highly doubt anything will happen, but now my inventory is private. 

 

How did he know? Should he be able to know? Was he just crazy? I think he was called "The Deranged One", but after reporting him, I can't seem to find his page?

[SuperBiasedMan]

u hav tf2 items? trade me plz, i got good rep.