Modded servers?

[Nerp]

Recently, I used quick join to enter a survive room ( I am quite new to this game ). I noticed that people were typing commands to get weapons, etc... I tried it out myself, it was quite fun. For some reason, we ended up spending about half an hour randomly team killing each other with loads of molitovs, really fast swinging melee weapons, and really fast shooting shotguns. Then, someone figured out how to start a round, and we started blowing the crap out of zombies. Then, I ended up getting an achievement, and thought to myself : Oh no. I just got an achievement playing in a modded server... Could I get banned for this?

So, this is my question. Is it illegit to play in a "modded" server? Can you get banned from steam? I'm sorry, I got in there through quick join...

[Kitsune]

Nope, you can't get banned for it. You aren't getting an unfair advantage in this situation, it's just having fun that everyone else is capable of having. I don't see any harm since you weren't the one to start using cheats on your side. And it's on a modified server, one where VAC is definitely lax. It's why the Dedicated Server application is available for download in Tools, so you can have more fun in unique ways.

[Nerp]

Oh. Good to know. Thanks!

[kahbee]

Yeah. Mods are safe.

The only time you can get VAC banned for a mod is if the game actually disables you from going on VAC servers due to a mod you have installed (which uninstalling the mod gives you access to them again) and then further bypassing that block if there's even a way to. XD

To be fair, you can do a lot of things straight through Source's console like spawn weapons and items. You don't even need mods installed to do that.

Valve seems to be all for people modifying their games through the console and mods. (hence why the dev consoles are always enabled and this game has great mod support)

So I wouldn't worry about it.
Achievements don't actually grant us anything so I guess it's up to the player if they want them legit or not :p