Steam Announces Game Bans

illram said:
Is this different than VAC? I thought VAC already worked with either server admins or devs to ban hackers. I.e. if a developer abandons their game (looking at you, every prior iteration of COD ever) then VAC become essentially useless.

I must have reported at least 10 people (legit, obvious hackers) in the past 3 weeks and I still see them every day.
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VAC only applies to Valve games
 
and this is coming from valve? the people who ban the CSGO hackers and then SOMEHOW sell another 50k copies of CSGO immediately after.

EVERY
FUCKING
TIME
for 3 years now.

fuck them.
 
DF-1 said:
and this is coming from valve? the people who ban the CSGO hackers and then SOMEHOW sell another 50k copies of CSGO immediately after.

EVERY
FUCKING
TIME
for 3 years now.

fuck them.
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I don't understand the connotation here. If someone goes through all the trouble of getting a new IP, making an entirely new Steam account and then buying a game over again to start from scratch and troll people what is Valve supposed to do besides ban them again? Aside from just not selling the game anymore, I'm not sure what you are suggesting as a solution.
 
So Valve is going to trust devs to put marks upon our steam accounts that make death threats against Gabe and sent take down notices to Youtube to silence reviewers like Total Biscuit?
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
This is my issue, Valve wants to be involved in everything, be it monitizing mods, selling early access and now banning people from other devs games, but wants to have no responsibility to make sure it's done properly and fairly.
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I dunno... giving a developer reign over their own game and providing the means to ban cheaters based on whatever method they themselves choose to use seems pretty proper and fair to me. Please explain how you would make this more proper and fair for everyone involved.

And as for a business looking for or creating other opportunities to make money.... ya... for shame right?
 
CEpeep said:
I don't understand the connotation here. If someone goes through all the trouble of getting a new IP, making an entirely new Steam account and then buying a game over again to start from scratch and troll people what is Valve supposed to do besides ban them again? Aside from just not selling the game anymore, I'm not sure what you are suggesting as a solution.
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hardware id ban
 
DF-1 said:
hardware id ban
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With all the paranoid privacy people here you want Steam and the online games tracking and keeping databases of users, IP addresses, and MAC IDs or hardware fingerprints :eek:
 
DF-1 said:
hardware id ban
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Won't stop someone from using a Virtual Machine to spoof their ID and creates a potential world of despair for anyone who buys used computers/hardware. Makes things ridiculously difficult for an unlucky customer and won't do anything to stop a determined cheater.
 
illram said:
Is this different than VAC? I thought VAC already worked with either server admins or devs to ban hackers. I.e. if a developer abandons their game (looking at you, every prior iteration of COD ever) then VAC become essentially useless.

I must have reported at least 10 people (legit, obvious hackers) in the past 3 weeks and I still see them every day.
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VAC is automatic, like PunkBuster. VAC must *detect* a known, previously-identified hack loaded into the users memory while they are playing the game in order to issue a ban. Reporting does nothing with respect to VAC bans. This system appears to be manual, whereby a developer could instruct Valve to issue a ban for essentially any reason they choose.

CEpeep said:
Won't stop someone from using a Virtual Machine to spoof their ID and creates a potential world of despair for anyone who buys used computers/hardware. Makes things ridiculously difficult for an unlucky customer and won't do anything to stop a determined cheater.
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Almost hack you can pay for has hardware-ID workarounds in-place for games that attempt to ban hardware ID's. It's a pointless, useless system for the most part.

The only thing that can reduce the number of people cheating in most online games is more frequent detections. Someone has to acquire the hack and send the code to the devs(or to PunkBuster or Valve, depending). PunkBuster could be far more effective than it is if EvenBalance would simply sign-up for master accounts at the top-5 hack sites, but they don't want to give money to "punks" as they put it so they don't do this and thus gamers playing games protected by PunkBuster get sub-standard protection. That's not to say other systems are better than PunkBuster, but EvenBalance protects more games than most other systems and thus could easily justify the cost(as it would cover many, many titles protected by PunkBuster and not just one or two in the case of something like BattleEye).
 
Spewn said:
The only thing that can reduce the number of people cheating in most online games is more frequent detections. Someone has to acquire the hack and send the code to the devs(or to PunkBuster or Valve, depending). PunkBuster could be far more effective than it is if EvenBalance would simply sign-up for master accounts at the top-5 hack sites, but they don't want to give money to "punks" as they put it so they don't do this and thus gamers playing games protected by PunkBuster get sub-standard protection. That's not to say other systems are better than PunkBuster, but EvenBalance protects more games than most other systems and thus could easily justify the cost(as it would cover many, many titles protected by PunkBuster and not just one or two in the case of something like BattleEye).
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Yeah, this is what needs to happen. If they "give money to the punks" they'll at least get contact info for them that can assist in tracking them down and holding them liable for infringement or DMCA violations. There aren't that many groups that release well-known hacks. SWATing a couple of them should be a decent squelch.
 
NickJames said:
Yeah ok, let's ban someones library of over $1000 in video games and see how well that goes over with the community. You would get more pissed off customers than the paid mods fiasco.
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Happened to my old steam account. Reported by a mod of a CS:S server for cheating, when I wasn't. Was just kicking their candy asses. My ability to play online was banned. I could still access my account, just not play online. Rendered over $600 in game useless. Valve gave no fucks whatsoever. Indefinite ban.
 
CEpeep said:
Yeah, this is what needs to happen. If they "give money to the punks" they'll at least get contact info for them that can assist in tracking them down and holding them liable for infringement or DMCA violations. There aren't that many groups that release well-known hacks. SWATing a couple of them should be a decent squelch.
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It's my understanding that they typically operate outside the US. Some might not, the people behind the Glider bot operated in the US and Blizzard sued them into oblivion. However the point is that if they paid for these master accounts at a few places they would have instant access to all the new hacks every time they got updated. They could run weekly detections and ban waves. This wouldn't eliminate cheaters, essentially nothing will, but it would reduce their numbers a lot. Even for free-to-play games, most people would get annoyed at needing a new account every 2-3 weeks.
 
Spewn said:
It's my understanding that they typically operate outside the US. Some might not, the people behind the Glider bot operated in the US and Blizzard sued them into oblivion. However the point is that if they paid for these master accounts at a few places they would have instant access to all the new hacks every time they got updated. They could run weekly detections and ban waves. This wouldn't eliminate cheaters, essentially nothing will, but it would reduce their numbers a lot. Even for free-to-play games, most people would get annoyed at needing a new account every 2-3 weeks.
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It doesn't really matter if you operate in the US or not. As long as they accept payments from any US payment processor, bank or credit card company their lifeblood can be cut off with a lawsuit. Good luck charging for something online when you can't accept credit cards.
 
CEpeep said:
It doesn't really matter if you operate in the US or not. As long as they accept payments from any US payment processor, bank or credit card company their lifeblood can be cut off with a lawsuit. Good luck charging for something online when you can't accept credit cards.
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Maybe, but if it were so easy then it would be done more often. To date, Blizzard is the only company I know of that's done it and only in one instance. There may be other examples but the major outlets for these types of things have remained the same and in continuous operation for at least the last ten years, probably more in some cases.
 
Ducman69 said:
IMO they should do Steam account bans, not just game bans, and the duration based on the severity and repetition of the offense.

First strike, you get month ban.

Second strike, you get a 3 month ban.

Third strike, complete Steam account ban.

People that cheat in one game are cheaters, whether or not they cheat YET in other games or have been caught YET in other games, and that has to be addressed.

Of course there should be an appeal process, which is $25 per appeal, to be fully refunded if the appeal is valid. That accounts for Steam's time to investigate.
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That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Great, I do not even play multiplayer games but, I get a ban just because, I loose all my games, which are about 60, or about $1000 worth of games. Damn, and people complain about Xbox Live Gold. :rolleyes::D
 
ManofGod said:
That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Great, I do not even play multiplayer games but, I get a ban just because, I loose all my games, which are about 60, or about $1000 worth of games. Damn, and people complain about Xbox Live Gold. :rolleyes::D
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1) So you admit that you are a cheater? Publicly?
2) You believe that the holocaust was a better idea than Steam game bans? Mmhmm, back to Stormfront with you!
 
Ducman69 said:
1) So you admit that you are a cheater? Publicly?
2) You believe that the holocaust was a better idea than Steam game bans? Mmhmm, back to Stormfront with you!
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So, I assume this is sarcasm, right? :confused:
 
ManofGod said:
So, I assume this is sarcasm, right? :confused:
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Well, if you're not a cheater, you couldn't lose your games in the first place, and if you don't think the holocaust is a better idea then you don't really believe Steam game bans are the stupidest idea you've ever heard, and so you're a liar. And we can't trust anything a liar says, so you now everything you say is suspect. Its science.
 
Ducman69 said:
Well, if you're not a cheater, you couldn't lose your games in the first place, and if you don't think the holocaust is a better idea then you don't really believe Steam game bans are the stupidest idea you've ever heard, and so you're a liar. And we can't trust anything a liar says, so you now everything you say is suspect. Its science.
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I know you forgot your sarcasm tags now. But eh, whatever, enjoy Steam becoming what you do not want it to be.
 
ManofGod said:
I know you forgot your sarcasm tags now. But eh, whatever, enjoy Steam becoming what you do not want it to be.
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I sincerely doubt that Steam will pursue system wide bans except in very rare instances and most likely for fairly egregious offenses ... all they appear to be doing is allowing the developers to determine where they line is drawn for their own games to institute a temporary or permanent ban ... as others have indicated, the developer is probably best positioned to judge that ... after the whole paid mod things everyone seems to be on a razor's edge and is pouncing on any change that Steam makes ... that doesn't make them all unreasonable :cool:
 
kbrickley said:
That is probably the best solution ... I am sure that companies could set up a cheaters server and put all banned users keys exclusively on that server
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You know, I've thought for a while now that if they just bothered to let players complain about other players and force them to fill out a survey of why, they could just segregate out players into like minded groups without banning anyone, and make for a better playing experience.

Team tween cock fag could be in their own little pool. Team racist bastards could be int their own little pool. Team sensitive snowflake could be in there own little pool, team random AFK could all pretend to play together, and team karaoke could be in there own little pool hopefully tagged with geographic location to be eliminated by armed drones, but as long as I don't have to listen to them, I could care less.
 
raz-0 said:
You know, I've thought for a while now that if they just bothered to let players complain about other players and force them to fill out a survey of why, they could just segregate out players into like minded groups without banning anyone, and make for a better playing experience.

Team tween cock fag could be in their own little pool. Team racist bastards could be int their own little pool. Team sensitive snowflake could be in there own little pool, team random AFK could all pretend to play together, and team karaoke could be in there own little pool hopefully tagged with geographic location to be eliminated by armed drones, but as long as I don't have to listen to them, I could care less.
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Certainly would get interesting if you put all the griefers onto one server together ... you could call it team MDK
 
ColdSun said:
Factually incorrect. VAC works on tons of non Valve games.

Examples: COD, Dungeon Defenders, etc
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COD and Dungeon Defenders are *two* games, not "tons" :rolleyes:

There is no "etc". Those are two Steamworks games that are VAC protected...the only two.
 
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