Numerous players have been reporting a VAC issue since the latest patch hit the Dota 2 client.
What’s VAC?
VAC is “Steam’s police”, also known as Valve Anti-Cheat. It’s an automated system designed by Valve to dispense justice on the platform. It scans a user’s system for any cheats while they’re playing the game. If a player connects to a VAC-secured server while using a cheat it would automatically ban them from playing there in the future. In case that happens your account will be permanently marked so everyone visiting will know you’ve been naughty. VAC bans are also permanent and can only be removed if issued incorrectly, otherwise, support can’t help.
Usually getting a VAC ban means you won’t be able to play only a certain game. There are exceptions though as stated by Valve themselves:
Cheating in one of the following Source games or a Source mod will result in a VAC ban for all games in the list below:
- • Counter-Strike: Source
- • Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
- • Day of Defeat: Source
- • Team Fortress 2
- • Counter-Strike
- • Condition Zero
- • Ricochet
- • Day of Defeat
- • Team Fortress Classic
- • Half-Life: Deathmatch
- • Deathmatch Classic
Similarly, cheating in one of the following Gold Source games will result in a VAC ban for all games in the list below:
In any other case it’s up to the developer to set the rule if cheaters will suffer a restriction in more than one game.
Dota 2’s latest patch causing issues
Valve have started to take more direct action in the last few months adressing the common problem of “smurfs”. The latter are experienced players who would make a brand-new account and completely stomp newbies, thus often ruining their game experience. Smurfs have been around for years and Valve finally added a way to track them and either place them in a bracket of their own skill much faster or ban them.
The latest patch though appears to be technical in nature as a lot of users are reporting pretty much the same – receiving a VAC ban for no reason at all. VAC errors do happen as the system isn’t perfect and in order to fix it, verifying game files, checking your firewall/antivirus and restarting Steam usually do the trick. If that doesn’t sort it out you might expect some bad news.
Ever since the issue first appeared Valve have rolled out multiple hotfixes, but they don’t seem to be related to the VAC error. Make sure you turn to Valve support in case you’re still experiencing it.
