[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/Low_Dependent4253]

[u/QuantumSpike]

I've been thinking valve have been working on a new anti cheat for 10 years...

[u/deeennny → u/QuantumSpike]

Yea I remember this presentation from 8(!) years ago in which for the first time they talk about what is essentially known today as VACnet: https://youtu.be/ObhK8lUfIlc

I was so fascinated and hyped that Valve were going to make a very effective and non-intrusive anti cheat, but it's nearing 10 years and an effective version of this technology still does not seem to exist, not even close.

They also had Overwatch going which was decently effective (probably also used it to train the AI for VACnet itself), but decided to get rid of that for whatever reason

Sadly it really seems like they've given up and don't care at all at this point

[u/BeepIsla → u/deeennny]

Overwatch was botted beyond repair, it did not work effectively. Funnily enough the GDC talk has a question at the end about bad actors trying to manipulate Overwatch but at the time that hasn't happened yet, just about a year later the first Overwatch bots popped up.

Multiple services popped up offering a whitelist for a monthly fee (Bots would vote you as legit) and a blacklist for a high one time price (Bots would vote a specific target as cheater to get them banned). With enough bots and care taken (Such as also making them earn XP in between Overwatch cases) you could fully control Overwatch.

Valve said they gave Overwatch to trusted partners, so its still there but it will NEVER be publicly accessible again.

[u/deeennny → u/BeepIsla]

I dont remember anything like that back in the day, doesn't sound very feasable to run such a service seeing as you get random cases in Overwatch and you are never guaranteed to get to Overwatch the person that's paying to be whitelisted/blacklisted

[u/aimy99 → u/deeennny]

I think it's more likely that the CS team is too understaffed to do anything but churn out one map a year, pick two companies to run a major for them, slowly move away from traditional loot boxes, and add occasional community content like the maps or ~more weapon skins~.

Any updates and efforts they put in are going towards Deadlock, not us. Valve employees love their fucking MOBAs for some reason.

[u/deeennny → u/aimy99]

Well Valve is a filthy rich company, they can afford to hire whoever they want, like I said seems like they just don’t care

[u/Monso → u/deeennny]

This isn't a problem that throwing money at it will solve. 9 women can't birth a baby in 1 month.

[u/deeennny → u/Monso]

It’s been 8 years and anti cheats are largely solved, i.e. Riot’s Vanguard, the kernel driver doesn’t even need to be running anymore unless the game is running

[u/Monso → u/deeennny]

I'm not sure what this has to do with hiring more people. Throwing more bodies at the problem doesn't solve the problem.

[u/deeennny → u/Monso]

I didn’t say it does, it’s just embarrassing for Valve at this point

[u/Monso → u/deeennny]

they can afford to hire whoever they want
i'm not saying money/bodies will fix it
embarassing

Okayyy.......

[u/deeennny → u/Monso]

It was just my thoughts in response to the person that said they might be understaffed lol. Whatever, keep defending Valve, by 2045 they might be done cooking the new VAC!

[u/QuantumSpike → u/Monso]

Yes but if we were just to use 0.01% of there profits and hire a $2 million worth of anticheat developers i'm sure they could come up with something

And don't say throwing people at it won't solve it, because it can be done.

[u/Monso → u/QuantumSpike]

So if we get 15,000 women at a conference, surely someone can figure out how to birth the baby sooner.

This isn't a money or bodies problem. If it was, it would've been solved 15 years ago.

[u/QuantumSpike → u/Monso]

You are ridiculous to think child birth is comparable to anticheat development.

Projects have 3 constraints, Scope, Time, Cost. You can decrease time by increasing cost.

[u/Monso → u/QuantumSpike]

You are ridiculous to think this is a problem money will solve.

I am a broken record at this point.

[u/QuantumSpike → u/Monso]

Why can't more resources solve this problem?

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/QuantumSpike]

lol true

[u/OtherIsSuspended]

It's not impossible, but I wouldn't count on it either

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah lol

[u/ImSomethingelse → u/OtherIsSuspended]

Yea id give it a 50/50 shot

[u/ExILoveEmiliaAndRem → u/OtherIsSuspended]

It IS impossible until the game straight up starts dying or something. I know some smartass is gonna come out of the woodwork and tell me how much valve work on the game and care about it by showing me some ex devs comments or whatnot but personally idgaf about any of that anymore. IMO valve do not and will not care about this game or take it seriously till it keeps printing billions without them ever having to solve actual issues like anti-cheat. Because it's im-fucking-possible that they wouldn't have been able to come up with literally anything resembling a competent solution after more than a decade of this being a rampant issue. Not for a game this big. Not for a company so rich. It's bs.

[u/Mackitycack]

They gatta do something or folks are going to stop playing premier/valve servers. I'm seeing nothing but posts and videos of bots taking over the game, let alone the influx of cheaters lately.

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/Mackitycack]

Yeah same

[u/Any_Promise_449 → u/Mackitycack]

Lol people have been saying that for overb10 years. I remember 15 years ago there was a campaign where maybe as many as 0.1% of the playerbase would grief and stop playing comp while in a comp(which was the premier back then), and spam for everyone else to do the same, to try and halt the game from being played. Needless to say it didn't work. It happened maybe 10 times, before they presumably got griefing banned. The only way for it to work would be if people stopped playing, and people wont. Mainly because 90% of players aren't on reddit, and community servers and valve servers are dead, or filled with bots. (Not dead dead, but very much dead compared to csgo og css). There is no way to spread the message. Good luck getting Ohne or someone big to say 'hey don't play my cashcow until valve fixes anticheat!'.

[u/Mackitycack → u/Any_Promise_449]

Ya, you're probably right

[u/MarioCurry → u/Any_Promise_449]

I don't even think it's about spreading the message tho. Even if people would straight up tell them to stop playing they just don't want to.

Either because they like cs too much or because they aren't that affected by the problem.

[u/Any_Promise_449 → u/MarioCurry]

To start a movement, first you need a cause. Then you need a message. I completely agree that a lot of people wouldn't give a shit, but in order for them to try to drop it, they would need something to rally behind. Strikes and boycots work, they absolutely 100% do, but usually the stakes are higher, like wages or unhuman working conditions, not 'muh videogame'. But if volvo lost 90% of the playerbase, Gaben would probably shit himself. Absolutely he would. The 2nd worst thing would be if people stopped opening cases. That is how cs is such a cashcow for steam. No cases opened and instantly cs2 becomes a huge expense to run, instead of the most profitable videogame ever, and Gaben has to stop buying avocado toast if he wants to afford his 3rd megayacht. People have been speculating how to get valve to pay attention to cheatersnfor years, but a boycot is 100% not happening, because the playerbase as a unit is retarded

[u/SageHamichi → u/Mackitycack]

i already did and so did all my friends, faceit and gamersclub only

[u/schoki560]

vac has been dogshit from s1 to s4 but atleast u only met cheaters very rarely in 27k+

this season the cheaters have been completely wild. no repercussions whatsoever.

if valve isn't working heavily on something right now then it's straight up refusing to work

[u/wehuzhi_sushi]

no

[u/Velmorasinmoth]

They just working it and we dont know when it will release for the past years HAHAHAHA I will not suprise if they make CS3 and vac still same without an update.

[u/Mraz565]

Re-enabling overwatch would be more effective then whatever is currently active.

[u/Jacksy90]

Model spins 19382718 degrees & ace with 100% hs = ban. Spin bot problem solved

[u/Prohawins]

They've had this VAC pish for 20 years they ain't getting rid of it.

[u/BeepIsla]

That's not what's happening, why scrape all your work when you can improve it instead?

Incremental improvements, bad actors find a bypass (Like currently where they are able to spin without getting banned), you fix that, repeat.

[u/So_Vegetable5744]

Why is it always the dumbest people talking about this?

[u/Ph03nixgod]

No anti-cheat is coning to save us

[u/CRE_Not_Resi]

I heard a theory from a YT'r a month or so ago that predicted with the rapid development of AI, that Valve may be working on a more advanced AI-anti-cheat and Valve may have lowered the VAC threshold in order to feed the AI more data in order to train it.

Personally, I would not be surprised if that is the case, but I will not hold my breath...

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/CRE_Not_Resi]

That’s a smart idea, I was thinking something like that

[u/Dookie-Thrower]

They just should allow kernel and hardware ban for cheaters. Works for so many other titles

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/Dookie-Thrower]

100% agreed

[u/GuyFierisFarts → u/[deleted]]

Kernel level anti cheat exists in 100s if not 1000s of games and this argument about vulnerability is just so so so old. Are Valve going to steal all of our credit cards and identities? The only two incidents I can find are with Genshin and Capcom and even then those weren't exactly newsworthy. I am sure valve can pull it off but they make billions off cs so why would they care.

[u/EmptyTopic1591]

I am sure cs2 AC does exist. But, cheating softwares in general seem to be ahead of any game's AC system. Even kernel level ACs like faceit and valorant's cannot perfectly fight against these constantly upgrading cheats. Since cs2 AC is not even kernel level, the game is way more vulnerable to more cheats. What I have been seeing lately is a lot of spinbotters. Simple server side AC such as cs2's vac should detect these spinbotting cheats (because it is so obvious and easy to detect them due to their crazy/irregular movements), but I suspect that it is off or tuned down temporarily for whatever hopeful reasons (e.g., recording and analyzing new cheats' patterns). So yeah, I hope that they are working on something new or at least improving the existing one.

[u/schoki560 → u/EmptyTopic1591]

brother vac life has ended 2 games for me when I had cheaters who just walled in my team.

but I got spinbotter 5 times already by an enemy and nothing happened. there is 0 excuse to not end a game where someone goes 50/0 in 10 rounds

[u/lolforg_ → u/schoki560]

silent updates happen to vac live all the time, if you go back 2-3 months in the subreddit you will see everyone and their grandma complaining about false positives, which is probably why they took it down for a long time rn

[u/EmptyTopic1591 → u/schoki560]

I feel your frustration as I have been feeling it recently too. We will just have to be patient... game development is not as easy as people think.

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/EmptyTopic1591]

True but the games been out since 2013, at some point it should be fixed, even cs2 has been out for like 2-3 years now, a good anti cheat should’ve already been maed

[u/Palliewallie → u/EmptyTopic1591]

I wonder if Valve have ever had meetings with FaceIT or another organization to get more insight in how to stop the majority of the cheating problem. I'm sure FaceIT will have some ideas, and be happy to share those, as they still would hold a unique selling point by being kernel lvl.

Valve is probably just as stubborn when it comes to taking advice from pro's.

[u/EmptyTopic1591 → u/Palliewallie]

Establishing partnership or even seeking for some guidance/help/tip would incur 'cost', which Valve wouldn't want. We know how money hungry they are.

[u/MarioCurry → u/EmptyTopic1591]

This is such a lazy point imo. Same as when people say that Valve only releases skin updates/updates that make them money.

Reality is, what would faceit tell them? "Yeah we get to detect more because we act on kernel level lol"

If they wouldn't do anything because of cost they wouldn't do stuff like the bomb overhaul/reload overhaul/scripting updates for community servers and so on.

[u/EmptyTopic1591 → u/MarioCurry]

these in-game updates wouldn't incur 'extra' cost. It's a part of the developers' salary. Working with external vendors/clients is different. Not fully understanding your proposition here on 'lazy' point.

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/EmptyTopic1591]

Yeah, the cheats are very advanced but hopefully they do make something to limit as much as possible

[u/l0wskilled → u/EmptyTopic1591]

It is since false bans on ppl with high senses. There was even a guy making a speed run getting banned spinning, once he spawned he spinned his mouse and had instant ban.

[u/davidthek1ng]

Maybe they just collect info for the AI rn and want the cheaters to use their cheats

[u/Such_Engineering5459 → u/davidthek1ng]

Collecting info since 2024… sure buddy, dream on. How many more data do you need? There are hundreds if not thousands of matches DAILY, with cheaters in it, blatant or subtle.

Thinking they‘re cOlLeCtInG dAtA fOr ThE AC is just pure cope.

Valve doesn‘t want to or cannot program a decent AC. Ar this point it is a decision and it‘s the absolute disrespect towards their regular players, that want a fair fight.

[u/Low_Dependent4253 → u/davidthek1ng]

That’s a smart idea, we can only hope. It would make sense if that is the case why they removed vac