With Counter-Strike 2, an old shooter has been launched in a new look. Now Valve warns against using a certain feature and threatens a VAC ban.
Valve is currently explicitly warning: Anyone who activates a certain function will be punished with a hard VAC ban. And that means you are no longer allowed to play games on Steam that rely on VAC protection, which includes a number of popular multiplayer titles.
At least there is also some good news. Because under certain circumstances the ban will be lifted again.
However, this currently only affects owners of an AMD graphics card. Owners of an Nvidia graphics card with a similar feature should not be affected.
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Using Anti-Lag+ leads to VAC ban
Valve itself writes:
AMD’s latest driver has made the “Anti-Lag/+” feature available for CS2, which is implemented by redirecting engine dll functions. If you are an AMD customer and play CS2, DO NOT enable ANTI-LAG/+; Any manipulation of the CS code will result in a VAC ban. As soon as AMD releases an update.
What is it all about anyway? AMD’s Anti-Lag and Nvidia’s Reflex aim to reduce latency in games. Latency, simply put, is the time it takes for your mouse click to appear on the display. Peripherals, built-in hardware and also your monitor influence the latency.
What’s the problem now? Anti-Lag initially only adjusts the CPU frequency to the GPU speed to avoid too many graphics processes getting stuck in the queue.
However, Anti-Lag+ goes one step further because, according to AMD, it applies adjustments to the game code itself. And that’s exactly what bothers Valve. Because changes to the game code are not permitted and will be punished. Because cheat programs do that too.
Who is affected by this now? So far you can only use Anti-Lag+ with Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards. If you play with a new AMD graphics card, you should either uninstall the latest update or deactivate Anti-Lag+ in the settings.
There is currently no indication that using Nvidia Reflex poses a risk of a ban.
What happens if I’m banned? If you have already been banned due to Anti-Lag+, Valve will reverse the bans once the driver issue is resolved. This is quite unusual because VAC bans are usually not reversible.
A player has now been banned from Counter-Strike and Steam for other reasons. But Valve was merciful and revoked the ban:
Valve bans account with highest Steam level and €1.4 million in Counter-Strike 2: Pardons him after 17 hours