Valve Bans Over 40K Steam Accounts
The biggest purge in Valve's history happened recently when its Valve Anti-Cheat system banned more than 40,000 Steam accounts.
According to Polygon, a sharp increase in Steam account bans was detected by SteamDB last July 6. The third-party database tool was doing a regular checkup on the data stream a day after the Steam Summer Sale ended when it noticed the disturbance. Apparently, about 40,411 accounts were shut down by the VAC in an effort to stop users from picking up cheaper versions of games after a big sale. The last time Valve acted this harshly against the offenders was in Oct. 12, 2016 where 15,000 accounts were banned.
Usually, the VAC takes down 3,000 to 4,000 accounts per day. Last year, the number of violators flagged by VAC reached a total of 15,227 players. This number was tripled with the latest operation and that was only done in one day. The Stream Summer Sale was the perfect opportunity to catch the cheaters, and it looked like Valve finally realized that these users take advantage of the sale to hoard cheap copies of big titles.
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A user may create multiple accounts to test the reach of VAC and see where it is weak. Now that Valve has shown what it can do to stop the said practice, offenders will think twice in hacking the system again.
Meanwhile, US Gamer reported that an additional 4,972 bans were executed based on in-game reports by other players. These cheaters reportedly go after big games like "Dota 2" and "Counter-Strike: Global Offense." According to the report, $9,580 worth of total weapon skins was lost due to the purge. Valve's move is an evident warning to users to not mess around. Those who have been caught by VAC are expected to be banned for a single game or their entire accounts may be shut down.
