I am getting this message
“You have been banned by anti cheat”
“You have been VAC banned”
“Kicked by console: https://reactivedrop.com/anticheat”
“Kicked by console: violation of EULA”
“Kicked by console: <reason>”
What is anti cheat?
Anti cheat, or VAC in general, is a way to ensure public games are kept clean from cheating. Any modification to game client libraries or external programs that modify the memory of the game might trigger this.
I thought only Valve games are using VAC?
That is partially true. Valve allows to implement anti cheat and connect it to VAC. Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop has development such software over the years and has implemented this feature.
Why I have been banned?
You might read this page, because you have been banned. There are three categories of bans:
- Short duration; These are typically issued by anti cheat detections. These bans are local and expire quickly, however you need to take care of the reason to avoid it to happen again;
- Medium duration; These are issued if you keep cheating after the first violation, or if you violated the Steam Conduct or EULA;
- Permanent; These are issued in two cases:
- on repeated offenses that fall into the first two categories,or
- instantly if you run pirated or cheat modified executables of the game, software that messes with, or uploads into the game’s system to gain online advantage.
The last category is permanent.
All bans have proof attached when they are processed, including proof of the pirated software used or any user violations done.
What to do now?
First, don’t panic. On the first violation, if it was an accident, most bans are temporary. Just make sure you read this page from Valve and don’t violate anything mentioned there. We highly recommend you verify the game cache to remove any modification to the game and close any third party cheat utilities, this includes files that you copied over manually, maybe even from friends.
If you are detected in-game for cheating, and think this is a false positive, you can open a ticket in the feedback system. Please provide detailed instructions what you did, including any modified executables, changes or other things you used to get detected. Tickets without this will be closed.
Depending on the type of violation, the ban will remove itself within the hour. However, if you keep being detected, or use alternate accounts to avoid detection, there might be a chance that the ban and proof is distributed to Valve’s global ban list. If this happens, you will see this on your Steam profile:
Above message will be public visible for anyone, plus, you won’t be able to connect to public games from that moment with the message: “You have been VAC banned”. This affects not only the server you played on, but all servers and lobbies. Above situation is permanent.
We don’t communicate any details of bans. We do store, and if needed, forward all proof to Valve.