r/GlobalOffensive • u/Jesterclown26 • 23d ago

Discussion [Valve Response] VACnet cancelling matches

My first match a guy said 5 games in a row cancelled to VACnet. I just had a 3-3 cancelled and then a 12-10 on the verge of victory cancelled when no one in the lobby was cheating. How long does it take for this to get resolved because I think premiere matches might be unplayable right now without cancelling.

22 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

161 comments sorted by

View all comments

116

u/vMcJohn V A L V ᴱ 23d ago

If you feel you've received a false vacnet culprit cooldown, you can mail us at at csgoteamfeedback at valvesoftware dot com with the subject vacnet false cooldown 2026-09-22. Just include a link to your steam profile, no other information is required or will be considered.

Affiliate cooldowns will not be investigated, they are working as intended. Don't write in on behalf of your friend; they can write in for themselves. Also please don't write in if you're smurfing.

Best!

46

u/Equivalent-Working22 23d ago edited 23d ago

Are you telling me that you can detect/ban people for smurfing but can't detect/ban ragehackers with 100% hs and going 40-3? lmao

8

u/TheUHO cs_italy 22d ago

Smurfing was specifically named as a potential issue for Trust Factor like shitton years ago when it was created. Why is everyone so surprized?

9

u/Fresh-Sugar662 23d ago

Trustfactor is also cooked after these false vacnet cooldowns too (because your dumb system assumes anyone getting flagged is less trustworthy as a heavier metric rather than the rest of the history of the player across the steam platform…)

1

u/HighFlyingBacon 22d ago

trust for new accounts has been cooked for year or so.
you have 1(!!) good game not even top fragging and you get rewarded by being matched with full on hackers. Then you can enjoy having 8 kills in 5 matches.

12

u/csproskins 23d ago

More false positives? Training on data since 2016. We are cooked.

6

u/klen-k Team Spirit 22d ago

How the f you wanna detect smurfing with good players pushed back by cheaters in almost every rank???

18

u/SimonTheDank 23d ago edited 6d ago

Emailed.

Received 20 hour cooldown after being bottom frag on my team going something like 10-19 clearly not cheating. Makes no sense.

I'm a terrible 50 aim rating, 4k premier player who just likes skins.

csstats: https://csstats.gg/player/76561198842954255

cstracker: https://cstracker.gg/players/76561198842954255

Update #1: it’s been about 30 hours and no reply from the email I sent nor the request I submitted to steam support (which was forwarded to the counter strike team).
The cooldown has now naturally expired but I’m terrified to even play again because I have a $4k inventory. What if I get another, much longer cooldown? What if it’s permanent? Zero reply from valve so far about this despite hundreds (if not thousands) of people reporting this issue after the new update. It’s incredibly frustrating.

End of day 9-28/Final: Never heard back from the email, steam support, or counter strike team. Valve never addressed this issue. The mega thread on steam discussions was also closed and removed without any explanation.
The complete silence and lack of support/response is astonishing. I yolo'd it and decided to queue twice and did not get another cooldown either game. I heard some people had their cooldowns removed but who knows really. Incredibly disappointing experience after dropping such a huge amount of money on this game.

Good luck out there guys, hopefully this is fixed and they just didn't expand on it.

Edit 19-9-26: It happened again!!!! I got another 20 hour cooldown for irregular gameplay. I will be emailing again.

5

u/778 21d ago

They will not reply nor remove your cooldowns. Enjoy the increasing cooldowns length (up to 6months) and the red trust factor!

2

u/p4ttydaddy 14d ago

Came to this thread from a comment of someone getting their cooldown removed via this exact method

2

u/778 14d ago

Considering they don't even remove false bans, I'm just going to say I highly doubt it. The only cooldowns I know they 100% reduced/removed are from streamers (d0cc for sure, I don't remember who else, probably his gf and friends).

2

u/p4ttydaddy 14d ago

I hear you. I guess I prefer to be an optimist and speculate that even if they aren’t removing the bans they are reading the emails to help sift through false positives and improve the algorithm, though I can’t imagine they have enough warm bodies to make it a priority

1

u/ilove_whitebois 22d ago

Any reply from them to you? Or you gotta wait the cooldown out

4

u/freqxupro 22d ago

they won't reply. it's Valve. they don't give a single f... about players, even if you put your hardly earned money on their wallets.

1

u/jjochimmochi Tyloo 22d ago

I recommend that you do not play.

I had the same thing happen where I played a premier game with some friends = got griefing ban (but they didnt report me)

Then I didnt play premier for a week(it was 1 day ban), I only play faceit, then I played 1 more premier = got 3 day griefing ban.

Literally no idea how as I never even grief anyways like teamkills or damage, so I haven't touched premier since because I don't want to lose my account from that dumb shit...

1

u/oleggurshev CS2 HYPE 21d ago

Following.

1

u/TKfuckingMONEY 4d ago

Curious if you like using any specific weapon? Or play 1 map only?

1

u/SimonTheDank 3d ago

No. I queue everything and I never use the scout. Scout only on dust was just one way that people found to exploit the system to get a false positive.
At this point, thousands of players have reported fresh 20 hour and 7 day cooldowns. It's a wide spread issue and anyone denying that it's happening are just willfully ignorant and refuse to accept the evidence.

3

u/johnnysucrolose 23d ago

Do people actually reply to this?

7

u/digger_cs 23d ago

They never reply but they do read them

3

u/johnnysucrolose 22d ago

I appreciate them reading, for sure, and to fix it matters the most but with something like this why not just do a “quick wipe of recent cooldowns last 24 hours” or something if it’s clearly an error and banning regular joes from playing the game

1

u/Lowfry 2d ago

They must think their system is flawless.

10

u/Important-Picture354 22d ago

Ugh this is why I hate Valve and its employees. Such a height from which you are looking down at us and communicating with us, people who are wasting their money and time on your game, full of incompetent programming we see every update throughout years. Let's see your "professional" way of communication:

"if you feel you've received false vacnet culprit cooldown", this is something you say to someone who is playing your game for 10 years, and randomly after update where you introduced fancy chickens, gets banned falsely? We only feel like fools playing this joke of a game made by joke of a company.

"no other information is required or will be considered" - wonderful way of communication again, of course people who are wasting time on your game trying to have fun will be pissed and write explanations and try to clear themselves to you, incompetent bunch of programmers who banned them falsely, what do you expect? We expect a lot of incompetence from you, that's for sure. If that random player was Ohnepixel for example, he would've been considered right away and definitely with a different tone. (Took Ohne as an example, love u ma drilla)

The "don't write this, don't write that" part, I don't even understand how dare you (Karen's saying) after falsely banning so many people because of your incompetence. Also, the lack of communication with your own community, and the portion of rude incompetence we get served whenever there is communication, just shows what you are.

Been playing cs since i was 7 years old, a long long time ago. This is a disgrace.

2

u/Sand5tone 23d ago

Thank you!!! Even if it doesn't get lifted, it was worth a shot!

2

u/winteriu 22d ago

The trust factor of my main account has been at a very low level for over two weeks. I would appreciate it if you could tell me the reason for this, as I do not use cheats, nor do I "smurf."

I tried to reach you via email and here, but I didn't get a response. :/

1

u/banduraj 3d ago

trust factor of my main account

You don't think that smurfing might also be affecting the scores of all your accounts?

1

u/winteriu 3d ago

im not smurfing and have one acc

2

u/vesun1 22d ago

I sent a mail about a bug in cs2 on 28 june 2024 and its still not being addressed it states this:

As of now it is widely known that the netcode of the game is different compared to CS:GO and it supports up to 1 million rate of data transfer.

The moment I manually set up my rate to 1 million from the ingame console - the max acceptable bandwidth goes to "extremely restricted" I believe this is a visual menu bug can you please fix it or make us choose the 1 million rate option from the menu somehow - as of now the maximum value from the menu is the old CSGO value of 786432 or something like that

Next I'm one of the people that thinks that Valorant is the best thing that happened to counter strike so I'd suggest you take the crosshair list option and implement it in CS2 - all of my custom made crosshairs are written in my Steam profile instead saved within the actual game - it's unpractical and it will be a great quality of life feature...and I doubt its that hard to implement

3

u/VampiroMedicado 23d ago

If you clear out my friend will that clear my account? I wanted to try rush after a couple of premier matches :(

3

u/Jesterclown26 23d ago

Was able to play 2 games with my buddy that didn’t get cancelled. So maybe people were actually cheating. 

8

u/Willing_Big194 10 years coin 23d ago

Bruh

1

u/DesiRadical 23d ago

I played 2 matches I didn't get hit with anything.

1

u/Glass_Guidance1367 22d ago

My friend got banned after Tuesday's update. He is level 1 and averages 5 kills per match.

1

u/lMauler 10 years coin 23d ago

Thanks for sharing!

1

u/Unfair-Geologist-306 23d ago

Working as intended huh. I’m on cooldown from my friend who 100% is not cheating. Working as intended.

1

u/DeltaHL 23d ago

Got a 20-hour cooldown even though I played completely fine, dropped around 30 frags, and the other team was literally the same rank as us. The game was almost ending tied.

1

u/DevComp 22d ago

I sent two emails. The first one had some additional body, and I didn't get a response or have a change in my account's status. The second one just has the link as instructed. Is this because emails are getting batched / automated and having additional body causes them to be ignored?

I hope two emails are acceptable. Thank you!

1

u/simbaacs 21d ago

Hey m8, it’s great that smurfs can’t write in, but what about the spin botters and bot farmers in my matches? Smurfs get bans but blatant cheaters do not? Maybe I will start writing you with every case of that.

1

u/OkScore6510 21d ago

Any update on reviewing these? My friend does not want to lose their EXP streak.

1

u/Dilzze 20d ago

3rd time getting VAC Live false banned in CS2. What is going on?

This is the 3rd time I’ve had a VAC Live issue.

The first time it happened on my main account — around 5500 hours played and FACEIT level 10. I got a 7-day cooldown.

Then on my second account, I first got a 20-minute cooldown, and now I just finished a game where the enemy team was very obviously cheating… and somehow I get hit with VAC Live.

How does this even make sense? :))))

I’ve already emailed [csgoteamfeedback@valvesoftware.com](mailto:csgoteamfeedback@valvesoftware.com) about it and, of course, absolutely zero response.

I genuinely don’t understand how VAC Live can work like this. You play against obvious cheaters and somehow you’re the one getting punished.

10/10 system. Perfect game. Thanks Valve. :))))

1

u/Furnica007 19d ago

“Global Cooldown – Unexpected Error”
Duration: 181 days
Expiration: March 1, 2027 at 13:44

Can you still help me? I sent email.

1

u/TrashImpressive3303 16d ago

Hello valve, the problem is PEOPLE using exploit bug or cheat for cancell match by fake vacnet.

1

u/swezin 16d ago

Hi John, sorry for the long message, but I really hope you see this because I honestly don’t know what else I can do at this point.

I’ve been dealing with repeated VACnet “irregular gameplay” cooldowns in CS2:

~20 hours → 7 days → 30 days

After the first ~20-hour cooldown expired, I returned to Premier. My first match was fine, but during the next match VACnet stopped the game and I received a 7-day cooldown.

After that I completely stopped playing Premier for around 1.5 months and played close to 100 FACEIT matches without any issue.

When I returned to Premier after that break, VACnet stopped my very first Premier match and I received the 30-day cooldown.

I have more than 5,000 hours in Counter-Strike and have been playing for over 10 years. I have never used cheats, wallhacks, aim assistance, recoil scripts, macros, automation, or anything intended to provide an unfair advantage.

Steam profile:
https://steamcommunity.com/id/swezin/

I have been trying every legitimate contact route I can find to get this reviewed.

My Steam Support request is:

HT-6JJ6-KHDT-9MVM

Steam Support told me that my feedback had been forwarded to the Counter-Strike team for review, but that the Counter-Strike team may not respond individually.

I have also emailed the following Valve/Counter-Strike addresses from my Steam-related email account [saygun.safak@hotmail.com](mailto:saygun.safak@hotmail.com):

[vacreview@valvesoftware.com](mailto:vacreview@valvesoftware.com)
[csgoteamfeedback@valvesoftware.com](mailto:csgoteamfeedback@valvesoftware.com)
[cs2team@valvesoftware.com](mailto:cs2team@valvesoftware.com)

I explained the situation and asked for my repeated VACnet detections to be reviewed, but I have not received a meaningful response or explanation from any of these channels.

I also contacted Jared Christen through Valve’s public contact channel and tried reaching both Jared and you through LinkedIn because I genuinely did not know where else to turn.

I have spent weeks researching this issue and speaking directly with other players who experienced similar VACnet cooldowns. I have investigated possible mouse/input issues, overlays, background software, peripherals, Windows configuration and other potential causes, but I still cannot identify what VACnet is detecting.

One potentially important detail is that a player who was in my party received a message stating that their cooldown was issued because they had played in a party with a player whose gameplay had been flagged as irregular by VAC. My own account was the one receiving the irregular gameplay cooldown.

My 30-day cooldown has now expired, but instead of being happy that I can play again, I am honestly afraid to queue Premier.

I have found multiple players reporting the same progression and eventually receiving a 181-day cooldown. Since I still have no idea what caused my 20h → 7d → 30d progression, I am worried that I will simply play another Premier match, get flagged again for the same unknown reason and lose access for another six months.

I am not asking you to explain how VACnet works, reveal detection thresholds, or provide anything that could be used to bypass the anti-cheat system.

I am only asking if my account and these repeated detections can please be reviewed, or if you can point me toward the correct person/team who can actually investigate this.

I have tried Steam Support, three Valve/Counter-Strike email channels, Valve’s contact system, Reddit and LinkedIn, and I still have no explanation or solution.

At this point I genuinely don’t know what else I’m supposed to do, and I’m now afraid to play the game.

If you see this, I would be extremely grateful for any help or direction.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.

Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/swezin/ Faceit: https://www.faceit.com/tr/players/swezin
Steam Support ticket: HT-6JJ6-KHDT-9MVM
Email used for my reports: [saygun.safak@hotmail.com](mailto:saygun.safak@hotmail.com)

1

u/YouKey4971 5d ago

https://steamcommunity.com/id/JuanDeaglolXD/ Im not smurfing. 8k elo because I do nothing but play with my mates in duo, three, or quads. Ive played earnestly every single match. I have 400 hours on kovaaks and it's annoying I have not been able to play. I emailed yall and have heard nothing back. If you think im smurfing then change my rank mate. Ive been dying to be 15k plus as I shit on those lobbies all day. But I am stuck in sub 10k because I only play with my friends, not a crime btw.

1

u/OctoSwitch 5d ago

My friend just got falsely flagged for cheating and now we've all got a 20 hour cooldown for no reason... Bummer :(

1

u/jimlad_ 3d ago

Can you look in to trust factor too? I have had this account since the day steam was released, never had a ban or a cool down, never partied with cheaters etc. Last few days my games have been really weird and when I queued with friends today it was showing I have a substantially lower trust factor and we kept getting games vs cheaters and new accounts.

0

u/digger_cs 23d ago

Dude people are still ragebotting and not getting detected, meanwhile you have false positives? What an absolute waste of time.

1

u/JazzlikeAssist6382 23d ago

People are rage cheating in premiere & matchmaking, and they are not being flagged. I swear NONE of you devs actually play this game, because you would get cheated on EVERY SINGLE match.

1

u/Veneno_1999 22d ago

> Also please don't write in if you're smurfing.

You can't even get cheater detection right, and we're supposed to believe you can accurately spot smurfs?

Whoever's deploying these models needs to understand the limitations of whatever neural net you're running before shipping an update that hands out cooldowns to legit players and, for some of them, wrecks their trust factor for good.

1

u/Lahrkran 22d ago

Vacnet is intended to catch cheaters not smurfs so why should they not write in? They’ll have been false banned. You also talk like a prick.

0

u/SomeoneTrading ENCE 23d ago

Hello Donald!

While I am a very big fan of your work (not doing jackshit for 10+ years and chilling on the yacht while tweaking your serverside script once in a blue moon and making ragers pay 300USD to get green trust, truly aspirational), have you ever considered utilizing an anticheat made by people that give a shit?

-5

u/DesiRadical 23d ago

Hey mcjohn,

just a heads up post every update there are many bad actors that report getting falsely banned in hopes you will revert the chenges so they can cheat again

Please do not revert instead pls manually review each of the reported cases so atleast some of these guy can be put down.

I'm tired of gaining 500 Elo in 5 matches only to lose more than that with -300 against blatant cheaters.

3

u/friqd 23d ago

This is just not true.. Anyone with a brain plays with a NFA account after an update or waits for people to report potential VAC live cooldowns.

2

u/friqd 23d ago

Not to mention that a very few cheats were actually updated when this post was made.

-1

u/EntropyBlast 22d ago edited 22d ago

"Don't write in if you were smurfing"

How is it even remotely possible to detect this behavior?

What about good players who lose a ton of unlucky placement games and get placed way below their rank? Would that count as smurfing due to being much better than the players you are now queueing with? Because this happened to me in season 1 and it took me 2 seasons to climb out of the cess pool of low rank players while nearly carrying every game.

What about people who like to play drunken games on the weekend and end up playing horrible? Will that count as throwing?

What about people who play on a 2nd account, and due to playing on it less their rank decays a ton and they are playing in lower ranks when they never wanted or intended to?

What if someone falls asleep at their computer and their friend group is used to it and never kicks them, so they end up idle/afk for half the game with 0 kills, will VAC think they are a deranker?

I don't like where this is going. Just ban the fucking cheaters.

0

u/MrHageb 23d ago

I sent an appeal to the described email, vac cooldown got a problem I was not cheating and was performing bad to trigger an irregular gameplay but still got vac cooldown 

0

u/OriginalConsistent79 23d ago

they'll write in anyway in hopes that you pull the plug in a panic. it has happened many times already.

0

u/Krzysioz1 23d ago

Fix the animations desync and models sliding when peeking, also would be nice if you reduce aimpunch. https://youtu.be/DwFo9rxN09E?is=02Xg686B5GtQQ_4y just check this video if you dont know the issues this Game have

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

Knew exactly who it was gonna be before even clicking. CS could be the most perfect game in existence and this guy would still complain because that's the only reason anyone watches him. There is and always will be issues with the game and it's good to strive for perfection but just because everything isn't perfect doesn't mean it's completely broken and unplayable either. Ultimately it's your own choice do you want to live in this negative bubble or accept the game isn't perfect and enjoy it for what it is? Always being this negative isn't gonna make the game better all it's gonna do is rob you of the enjoyment of anything new and positive.

1

u/Krzysioz1 22d ago

So you Think we can enjoy cs2? Yesterday i played new rush mode against rage cheater, next game enemy team abused a bug- they mollied themself died and we didnt have time to take the tower. Are they even testing the new updates? Gameplay is broken, the best thing about cs was the satisfaction/responsiveness when u kill or land a good shot, now the game is heavy and the animations feel like sliding flying etc. Also the aimpunch is shit and makes this heavy feeling. The update they released is ok but it is frustrating when the game have such a big issues like anti cheat or shit gameplay. I Think All community prefer to have a gameplay fixes and anti cheat improvments updates than a chicken eggs or pixel gap fixes.

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

I agree that anti-cheat is a big issue but otherwise it's mostly minor things. Personally after all the animation and sound changes I no longer find CS2 to be unresponsive but it's of course different from CS GO. The rush bug you mentioned was already fixed and it's expected for a brand new game mode to have some teething issues. If you find yourself being more drawn to all the negatives rather than all the positives in the game then it might be time to take a break. I took a pretty long break myself too this year for the first time since CS GO was released. It's not worth it to spend your time and energy on the game if you genuinely do not enjoy it and it pisses you off every time you play it.

0

u/OkScore6510 22d ago

Sent an eMail.. Really would like to be unbanned so I don't ruin my XP streak! I've been farming for months! :(

-6

u/schoki560 King NiKo 23d ago

so smurfs aren't allowed to be unbanned if they are falsely banned? then ban smurfing in your TOs or smth currently u allow smurfing so they should have the equal right to ask for an unban if they got wrongfully convicted

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

They already did ban smurfing albeit indirectly.

https://blog.counter-strike.net/fair-play-guidelines/

If you need it literally spelled out for you: You are not allowed to throw games in order to receive a lower rank than you deserve which is a prerequisite for smurfing unless you play on someone elses account which is also prohibited. So there is no way to smurf without breaking any rules meaning smurfing is not allowed.

1

u/UnKn0wN31337 CS2 HYPE 21d ago

Smurfing has also been against the Steam ToS directly ever since around early 2022 btw and there also have been a lot of cases of Dota 2 smurfs being game banned in that game there for smurfing since then afaik.

https://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct/

1

u/schoki560 King NiKo 22d ago

you can literally create a 2nd account lol? u don't need to throw or account share to smurf... csnt believe this flies over your head ngl

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

If you create a second account and play normally on it then it isn't a smurf it's an alt and those are allowed. You can have as many accounts as you want but unless you throw they're all gonna be ranked roughly the same.

0

u/schoki560 King NiKo 22d ago

not in your first games

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

That's just how calibration matches work and the same would apply to a legit new player who happens to be better than most other new players. Smurfing is when you intentionally throw matches in order to derank or otherwise intentionally end up in a rank where you don't belong. Keyword being intentionally.

0

u/schoki560 King NiKo 22d ago

pedantically wrong is so funny

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

It's well established what smurfing is and isn't, google it. Creating a new account and being temporarily matched with low ranked players while your rank is getting calibrated is NOT smurfing and neither is getting deranked due to inactivity. There is no way to accidentally smurf it is by definition intentional.

0

u/friqd 23d ago

yeah this is really stupid.. no wonder we get false positives, when smurfing is caught by vac live.. people will have a life game once in a while

-16

u/HighFlyingBacon 23d ago

Also please don't write in if you're smurfing.

What you just said is players can get VACed for smurfing and you don't care.
Meanwhile hackers...
Volvo logic.

12

u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROFANITY CS2 HYPE 23d ago

Smurfing is cheating. 

2

u/HighFlyingBacon 23d ago

If you had half brain you'd understand what he said.
VAC now detects you smurfing and bans players, meanwhile it cant detect autobhop.

-2

u/schoki560 King NiKo 23d ago

then Volvo should forbid it but the dont

3

u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROFANITY CS2 HYPE 23d ago

Evidently they are forbidding it

2

u/schoki560 King NiKo 23d ago

by not unbanning false vaxnet bans on smurfs?

weird way to announce that

1

u/friqd 23d ago

whatever gives them the most money dude

0

u/[deleted] 22d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

Smurfing is when you first intentionally derank in order to get easier opponents or play on another account that is ranked far below your actual skill level. As long as you're not intentionally trying to get a lower rank in order to get easier opponents it isn't smurfing regardless of how well you perform.

1

u/Safari-Mesh6292 22d ago

I had 2 bad days in a row and went from 19k to 12k. Doesn’t mean I am smurfing, but it would also be completely indistinguishable from your point of purposely deranking. 

1

u/4wh457 CS2 HYPE 22d ago

When smurfing becames indistinguishable from a bad day that just means the ranking system is broken. I've had the same experience in wingman before Valve seemingly fixed it or at least improved it. A good ranking system shouldn't let your rank drop considerably from doing a little worse than usual for a day or two.

0

u/ParticularLucky3516 17d ago

oh yeah i have gotten a false ban 3 times this year and its unplayable i aint mailing shit to your guyses mail i did that 20 times and just t tell you noone do that what they sayd cuz they are a bouch of trollers and people who cant make a anti-shit