"Defensive" system we deserved, or "How to V.A.C."

[Asdolg]

Well.

It's been a long time.
If I remember correctly... Was the year 2011? Probably, not sure.
The time when a friend invited me to Dota 2 beta. It was tough at first, but later it swallowed me with fun and joy of playing with friends. And then I found cosmetic items Valve makes. They are good, sure, even when I think that some could be done better - it's still not that bad.
Later exclusive content came - weather effects, for example. Was a shame that I missed that and couldn't use, at that time I didn't know it was possible to trade them with players.

And the year 2016 happened. The time when I found the usefulness of Cheat Engine in singleplayer games. Well, making the player invulnerable, or impossibly rich - nothing of that gives a joy, I usually used it for doing fun experiments with variables, or minor messing up with settings, whatever.

At that time I knew really nothing about how V.A.C. works, nor its problems, nor what players think about it.
I often noticed topics with "I got vac-banned for nothing pls unban", but always was like "oh, sure those are cheaters who deserved it". Well, no.

Should notice, that in real life I am on a late stage of studying in university for a programmer diploma. It wasn't just a single time I was thinking about how V.A.C. could be done (I never tried to find that info before, it's just interesting to imagine systems by yourself). I imagined how it tracks anomalies of huge value leaps on certain variables - so they use hacks. I imagined how it notices players making several dozens of clicks per second - so they use auto clickers. I imagined, how it tracks the player somehow bypassing server-only restriction for certain info, even knowing this is just nearly impossible. And I had many versions like these.

I've heard "there is no cheats for dota" official statement (spoiler: this is ridiculously wrong), and even trusted this, thinking "oh, V.A.C. probably tracks everything, so we are safe).



But no. Not a single time I was right.



It was the year 2017.
So. It is stated, that V.A.C. tracks launched processes and checks if any of them are something from their database of cheating programs...

When I learned this, I felt so stupid. I've never felt as stupid as there. When I bought a bland cup of nothing for a high price - no. When I threw money to Valve - no. But just there. Every single variation of the system I tried to imagine was better than what it truly is. I was trying to imagine a simplified version of V.A.C., but all of them were significantly superior.

The mind just went enraged after I found this out. But even at this stage. I couldn't think that it will be SO stupid...

Of course, I knew that not a single time Cheat Engine will be able of doing something during a multiplayer match. So I just ran Dota, went into the lobby (basically a local game. Being a host allows you to manage everything in it. This isn't V.A.C. protected server, right?) and tried doing different things.

Wore cosmetic items of one heroes onto other heroes. Yeah, was pretty funny :)
Changed weather effect to ones I don't have (well, I didn't have any actually). Enjoyed, those look beautiful.
Managed to replace courier model with screwed up hero models - yeah, this was ridiculous as hell.
In the end, I changed coordinates of some models, changed their model resource - basically tried to make my own landscape. Well, it was very bad, Cheat Engine surely is not an appropriate tool for such a task)

But whatever. Of course, I closed the program before playing matchmaking afterward. I can't imagine where was the mistake. Was I doomed to be banned just when I injected Cheat Engine into the process? Or was it when I didn't reload the game after closing Cheat Engine and going onto matchmaking?

How much could I be surprised, when after about a week I saw the doom on my account? "Account had been blocked because of Valve Anti-Cheat detected 3rd-party soft injected in the game". The message wasn't exactly like this, just a smooth translation from my language.

At that very moment, I didn't quite understand what happened. But when saw the game inventory blocked, and even custom games not available, I got it. I got V.A.C.-banned... for cheating... in the local game...


Of course, I then went googling about people getting V.A.C.-banned and trying to undo it in any way. And never saw a single occurrence when it was undone. In official F.A.Q. page of getting V.A.C.-banned it is stated, that they "have zero tolerance towards cheating". This could sound reasonable until you start thinking about people who REALLY got banned by mistake. So they say "if you were banned by mistake - you will eventually be unbanned automatically". A funny one joke, isn't it?

As you might see, I waited long enough (a bit more than a year passed since ban). Of course, I didn't cry much about the ban and just made a new account specially for playing dota (the game, by the way, is getting more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ day by day).

I hoped their "automatic system" will manage it. I put so much belief in "they know what they are doing" and "the justice should win, shouldn't it" states. But it was all wrong. The system is so stupid. When common people get banned literally for nothing (try use Cheat Engine for cheating on an official server - you won't be able to, but still would get banned), real cheaters simply bypass that V.A.C. system. Because of what? Right, because their cheats are not included in the database. And never will be. It is just incapable of that until someone reports the cheating soft.

Again, it was more than a year since I got banned. I don't have a single hope of getting unbanned, that's clear. This is just a cry of the soul. The soul which was stricken directly into the hub of mind.

That strike is called "the broken belief".


______________________________________________________________________
P.S. Just had to conclude my experience. Feel free to discuss, I probably won't check this topic.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

tl;dr... CE won't give your account a VAC ban unless you use it on the game your account was banned in.

[ᴠ̅̅ɪ̅̅ᴘ̅̅ᴇ̅̅ʀ]

Your account has not been banned by any administrator. VAC is an automatic system. Check the pinned thread here for more info, And This is a "User Forum" We are "Not Staff, or Admins" of Steam http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/9/882959527688934488/

449 day(s) since last ban still no

Read, And "Vac Bans" are permanent
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7849-RADZ-6869&l=russian

[gwait]

Publicado originalmente por Asdolg:

Of course, I then went googling about people getting V.A.C.-banned and trying to undo it in any way. And never saw a single occurrence when it was undone. In official F.A.Q. page of getting V.A.C.-banned it is stated, that they "have zero tolerance towards cheating". This could sound reasonable until you start thinking about people who REALLY got banned by mistake. So they say "if you were banned by mistake - you will eventually be unbanned automatically". A funny one joke, isn't it?

As you might see, I waited long enough (a bit more than a year passed since ban). Of course, I didn't cry much about the ban and just made a new account specially for playing dota (the game, by the way, is getting more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ day by day).

I hoped their "automatic system" will manage it. I put so much belief in "they know what they are doing" and "the justice should win, shouldn't it" states. But it was all wrong. The system is so stupid. When common people get banned literally for nothing (try use Cheat Engine for cheating on an official server - you won't be able to, but still would get banned), real cheaters simply bypass that V.A.C. system. Because of what? Right, because their cheats are not included in the database. And never will be. It is just incapable of that until someone reports the cheating soft.

Again, it was more than a year since I got banned. I don't have a single hope of getting unbanned, that's clear. This is just a cry of the soul. The soul which was stricken directly into the hub of mind.

That strike is called "the broken belief".

Then you have done pretty poor research. In fact, just the Wikipedia article about VAC lists at least 5 instances where VAC bans were falsely applied and removed. In fact, there were even a few that were removed within the last week.

So, what happens to accounts that are actually falsely banned? They get removed like the support article states. Your ban reason was never even disclosed and with a ban still being active after such a long time, you can start to accept the facts. There is no reason to use specific keywords such as "real cheaters" when there are only two categories, cheaters and non-cheaters.