Steam Goes On A Banning Rampage, Blocks 40,000 Cheating Accounts

Cheaters never win. And if you need further proof of that, just ask the team at Valve.

The company launched a program called Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) that automatically locks out accounts that use particular cheats on the service – and it had a field day today, indicating that it's banned more than 40,000 accounts on its distribution service.

The previous record for cheating accounts that were banned from the service was just over 15,000 back in October 2016 – and it appears that some people just aren't learning that they can't get away with cheating.

On top of that, the company also noted that an additional 4,900+ accounts were also set to be banned, mainly due to in-game reports. With those accounts, the total amount for digital items set to be lost is somewhere around the vicinity of $9,500.

Now, this isn't because of cheaters who use mods or anything in game, but mainly those who thought they found a way to creep into the system illegally and take advantage through exploits in games, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. But clearly that isn't the case.

And more than likely, the account holders won't be back, as, based under VAC rules, once it's banned, that's pretty much it, though it did note that "if a VAC ban is determined to have been issued incorrectly, it will automatically be removed. If you wish to discuss Valve Anti-Cheat with the community, you may do so."

This won't affect normal players who use Steam in a traditional sense, like they've been doing over the past few days with the company's Summer Sale cleaning up in millions of dollars in purchases. So you can rest easy. But if you're trying to be sneaky and manipulate the system, there's a fairly good chance that you will get caught. And you'll have very little chance of getting back in once you're banned.

Hopefully we'll see more developers take charge of their games and ban the cheaters that are ruining it, like with Friday the 13th: The Game and Overwatch. We know Blizzard just did a house-cleaning on its multiplayer shooter recently – and it's not done yet.