Valve Has Banned 600,000 Since CS:GO Went F2P

Jason Winter
By Jason Winter, News Editor Posted:
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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive went free-to-play on Dec. 6. The reaction from fans has been mixed -- literally, as the positive reviews for the past 30 days on Steam stand at a "Mixed" 59%, which stands in contrast to the game's "Very Positive" 86% overall reviews.

Hackers and cheaters, though, apparently love free-to-play CS:GO -- the ones that are still playing, at least. In December, the Valve Anti-Cheat service (VAC) banned over 600,000 users, by far the largest total for a single month, as charted by CS:GO expert @Nors3 on Twitter:

Judging by his chart, the 609,373 VAC bans were roughly triple the previous high. While Nors3 admits that it's "difficult to know the origin of the Game bans," CS:GO's F2P transition almost certainly is the cause for this sharp uptick, which resulted from five ban waves over the month. Another big ban wave in December targeted cheaters in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, though it came from PUBG itself, not from VAC, and only targeted about 30,000 accounts.

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About the Author

Jason Winter
Jason Winter, News Editor

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

More Stories by Jason Winter

Discussion (7)

Moses 5 years ago
the f2p is a big mistake, the game should cost 60$ instead of f2p, but now is 2late, every cheater have backup of 100accs. anyway... the best way to deal with cheaters is HARDWARE ID BAN with IP BAN, with that no cheaters will be able to play cs go. unless they change their network IP and most of all PC! LOL! in the Game OVERWATCH of Blizzard u will rarely Encounter a cheater. because.... Blizzard Perma Ban them with HARDWARE ID BAN INCLUDE IP BAN. in conclusion, if valve actually wanted to ban the cheaters from the game, they would have done it already, they profit from them and they try to keep them into the game because they profit from them buying skins and using their marketing while keeping buying prime accounts so they could cheat on prim since they want to face against less cheaters which wont happen anyway LoL.

Teddy 5 years ago
Team fortress 2 and Counter strike global offensive are both in a very bad spot being free to play on stream.

PuddingBear 5 years ago
We need a Korea policy with online game force people to register with SSN. Along with heavy regulation on store of the game. This way you ban the person not an account or IP and hopefully ban all Loot Crates or Forms of gambling in any game.

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rickshaw 5 years ago
There's ya negatives there, 600,000 of them all writing crappy reviews because they were banned. THat's The true Steam community for ya! once slander starts in steam it never stops.

Rundundukas 5 years ago
Age of cheaters ... we should take example of Korea or Japan, simple sue cheaters. Otherwise its fight against windmill.

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