Make VAC hardware ID ban with no delay.

[Big Fungus]

When VAC released along with P2P games, delayed bans were a very smart thing to do. Nowadays, though, most cheaters in F2P games use throwaway accounts and do not care about being detected. The fact that VAC intentionally doesn't ban right away makes it worse - it gives cheaters more time to ruin legit players' experience. When a cheater gets banned, they can simply create another throwaway account and happily continue cheating. This could be greatly reduced by introducing HWID bans to VAC. As such, bans would also apply to all associated accounts, which would work as a great deterrent from cheating. HWID bans are bypassable, but are at the very least annoying to deal with. IP bans would have the flaw of being easily bypassable and may cause false bans (somebody's brother is cheating on the same network, they both get banned).

So please, update VAC so it HWID bans cheaters, as well as all their associated accounts.

EDIT: The people have spoken, it would be inefficient.

[VaLiuM]

There is a reason why VAC bans are delayed.

And HWID bans won't work long-term.

Back to square.

[Big Fungus]

Originally posted by VaLiuM:

There is a reason why VAC bans are delayed.

And HWID bans won't work long-term.

Back to square.

As I said, delayed bans used to make sense when TF2 or CS:GO were paid games. Nowadays, both games are free. There is little benefit from delaying VAC bans, as the cheaters are there simply to ruin the other players' experience as much as possible. They do not care if they get banned, and as such, may use detected cheats. The time they have to cheat should be reduced as much as possible.

HWID bans are bypassable, but they would be better than nothing. Currently, there is nothing to stop the cheater from immediately creating a new account and continuing. This would at the very least make it harder to keep on cheating.

[VaLiuM]

Having VAC work instantly won't be as effective as it is right now. Also cheat makers can easily test their cheats and make them even harder to detect.

Sure, it means sometimes it takes longer until cheaters are banned but the numbers will be higher if that happens, thus making it more effective.

And for HWID bans, people that find cheats, will also find ways to bypass such bans, it would be a waste of resources to implement such a feature.

Edit: There is a reason why VALVe invested into a Deep-Learning-System with VACNet, a completely different approach which costs VALVe thousands of dollars every day, i guess.

[Roger]

Valve knows very well who and when has been using a hacking program since the very beginning of the game, they just do not want to deal with the problem, they will probably produce software that will be able to counteract a player with a hack in the game. It will certainly cost a few dollars and can be purchased from the market. Valve likes to make money on the backs of children.
1. Antiwallhack 5$ for mont.
2. Antiaimbot 15$ for mont.

[Zekiran]

And what happens when that "account" that cheated and suddenly has a hardware ban and all its 'other' accounts banned too, was hijacked thanks to an error in judgement or a scary scam?

How many kids will never be able to play anything on their computer because of something their brother or friend did while on their account?

How about no.

The Vac and Overwatch systems work very well.

If you find you're in a lot of games with cheaters, improve your trust factor and play with people you know.

[VaLiuM]

Originally posted by Roger:

Valve likes to make money on the backs of children.

You can say that about ANY bigger company that is in the business, so that is not really a punchline there.

VALVe probably makes enough money with CS:GO and it's economy to be able to re-invest that money into more anticheat. There is VAC, VACNet and Overwatch, more anti-cheat than any other game out there has.

[Big Fungus]

Originally posted by Zekiran:

And what happens when that "account" that cheated and suddenly has a hardware ban and all its 'other' accounts banned too, was hijacked thanks to an error in judgement or a scary scam?

How many kids will never be able to play anything on their computer because of something their brother or friend did while on their account?

How about no.

The Vac and Overwatch systems work very well.

If you find you're in a lot of games with cheaters, improve your trust factor and play with people you know.

HWID bans would only apply to the specific device. Accounts should not be shared with anybody and it is up to the owners' responsibility to keep their accounts safe.

[Cathulhu]

Hardware IDs are as easily spoofed as an IP is changed.
Ineffective at best, banning innocent buyers of used hardware at worst.

[VaLiuM]

HWID bans are a waste of time and resources, if that would work out, VALVe wouldn't have looked elsewhere for alternatives.

Edit: Thanks to whoever restored the thread. :D

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Ineffective at best, banning innocent buyers of used hardware at worst.

Yup, another negative aspect, similar to IP bans. It simply wouldn't work out long-term.

[The Giving One]

Please use the forum search. This has been gone over and over and over here.

And over again and again and again. What you propose will not work, and would ban innocent players more.

Might come as a surprise, but Valve actually wants to try to avoid that as much as possible.

VAC might be slow, but it bans more cheaters due to delayed bans and it is incredibly accurate, too.

There is no such thing as the perfect anticheat. It does not exist.

[VaLiuM]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

There is no such thing as the perfect anticheat. It does not exist.

Exactly, it's an never ending arms race and people simply have to understand one thing: Fix society and you fix the cheating problem.

TL:DR: Fixing society is a hard thing to do.

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by VaLiuM:

Exactly, it's an never ending arms race and people simply have to understand one thing: Fix society and you fix the cheating problem.

TL:DR: Fixing society is a hard thing to do.

It really is that simple, yes. Sadly, there will always be cheating and there probably has always been cheating, and not just in video games.

[Big Fungus]

Originally posted by VaLiuM:

HWID bans are a waste of time and resources, if that would work out, VALVe wouldn't have looked elsewhere for alternatives.

There are certainly alternatives. The thing is, they do not stop cheaters from simply creating new accounts. I suppose quickly banning cheaters is something VACNet could do.