More than 40,000 Steam accounts were banned yesterday as the 2017 Steam Summer Sale came to an end.
The number of bans spiked significantly, with around 30,000 bans issued before 12pm ET. Normally, there are about 3,000 to 4,000 bans per day, but this time Valve Anti-Cheat detected a massive 40,411 cheating accounts by June 6. The last major wave of bans occurred in October 2016, when 15,227 bans were handed out, according to the Steam Database.
On July 5, the last day of the Steam Summer Sale, Valve cracked down on cheaters. They knew that cheaters would want to get their game on another account at a discounted price. Cheating has been rampant, especially during the summer, in Dota 2 and even more so in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive because of this cheap workaround.
According to vac-ban.com, a total of $8,674 worth of weapon skin cosmetics were lost due to the VAC bans. When a player gets banned, they can no longer play on Valve servers, rendering their skins useless. Many examples of “dead” inventories can be found on Reddit’s /r/VAC_Porn subreddit.
In addition, 4,972 accounts were banned in-game, indicating that the CS:GO overwatch report system was also put to work. Griefers and suspected cheaters who were not detected by VAC met their doom.
These bans raise the question: Will this significant wave of bans deter players from cheating? Probably not. However, it is satisfying to know that karma caught up with the right people in the gaming world.