I got VAC banned and I've never hacked in my life!


JK, but it has happened to other people...

But Valve has VAC banned players that have not cheated. With this new TF2 update that is coming out today/this weekend, they made 100 Golden Wrenches(that pretty much has the Midas golden touch when you kill someone they turn to golden statues) that were to be at "random" times to be found or made through their crafting system. People found out that the items aren't given out at random times, but actually set times and a few times of drops and in one persons case, the entire list of times were leaked to a person, Drunken F00l. You may know him from all the work he's done for scripts/plugins/websites for TF2, CSS, and HL2. He used this "insider" information to get himself and people within his SourceOP community these wrenches. So this Drunken F00l guy was in his server counting down the next drop(at this time no one knows he has a list, they think he just figured out some kind of algorithm to them and no one knows FOR SURE this item is coming on his count down, they just know he's counting down to a wrench from his formula and since he had one himself, he MUST be right about it.) and so when he reaches 0, like 8 people try to craft and a guy in the server finds the Golden Wrench and is all happy and shit, then the next day, VAC banned and the wrench is gone.

http://www.sourceop.com/modules.php?nam ... pic&t=3369.

The link to the thread.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... ?t=1348960

Link to STEAM forums thread where another person got VAC banned for it and the discussion there.

My question to you, does this hurt your view of the VAC system because of players that aren't cheating are getting VAC banned, do you think these players even though have no actually cheated(aimbot, speed, etc.) wise have cheated the system enough to deserve these bans, or something else?

My opinion is once you get off of black and white, the VAC system actually catching you modifying dll's and ban people for something else to label them as a cheater for life, where is this going to stop? What is going to stop someone from getting banned for him getting frozen/slap/slay/mute/burned and then getting mad about it in our server?

We ban people for being douchebags all day long, why would VAC be any different if it is controlled by valve?

Is a man not entitled to his golden wrench? 'No!' says the man who works at Valve, 'It belongs to the random achiever.'
'No!' says the poster in Steam Forums, 'It belongs to everyone.'

I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...

Counter Strike: Source

I think (based upon assumption of course) that everyone who was banned used an exploit. In this case the cheat/exploit was action taken with knowledge of privy information. It's the exact same thing as insider trading in the stock market.

If you have insider knowledge that can give you an unfair advantage over others, it's unethical to act on it even if there are no obvious victims.


I'm fine with Valve doing this specific, targeted, and justified action. It's a little fuzzier because nothing was downloaded and there werent really players hurt by it, but the offenders I read about were clearly in the wrong and are now trying to play victims.

Aha! It's Spyda's pre-emptive move to protect himself from the fallout of his upcoming VAC ban. Well played

If they used information that gave them an unfair advantage then they are in the wrong. It's a bit harsh but after looking at all the hoopla these golden wrenches have tied to them, being a global announcement and listing your name on a special website http://www.teamfortress.com/engineerupdate/wrenchlog/, I can see why it happened and have zero pity for those caught.

Valve is stupid for creating a limited item, and then not expecting players to do everything in their power to get it. Crap like this needs to stay out of games since it doesnt do anyone any good. I say kudos to the people who used the leaked valve code to get it (which came from a valve employee to begin with), since they essentially pissed on valve itself.

Valve got themselves into this mess and then ended up going KGB in order to "fix" things. Banning people from a paid game over a stupid wrench...wow

While server admins may choose to ban specific players, server admins cannot VAC ban players. The VAC system is automated - contacting Steam Support to report cheaters is not necessary, nor will Steam Support act on any information provided.

Directly from their website.


I agree most of them are in the wrong, but the DereK kid that got banned really wasn't. If you joined a server with people that were open and talking, almost EVERY server had someone counting down about every 15 minutes saying one is coming in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, NOW! and someone/multiple would craft and only get their item and no wrench. It just happened that this guy is extremely known for his scripts/plug-ins for servers, his websites that actually HELP the entire TF2 community by showing off items that people have(http://www.tf2items.com/id/Spyda319) and another site that shows your statistics for the game more detailed than what STEAM does(http://tf2stats.net/player_stats/Spyda319 kinda empty for me since I just found out about it), and more controversially the TF2 idler program which at it's demise Valve punished people who used it by giving everyone who didn't a halo. So even though this guy has been on the negative side once(and now twice), he has been on the helping side many, many, many times and still continues to do good things and has been rewarded with community weapons(Special regular items that say community on them for huge contributors to TF2. TF2 is a LOT more open to ideas and have more fun with the game than CSS. http://www.tf2items.com/lists/ Community weapons are already described, and Self-Made Items are things that people thought of, "Hey, this would be cool to be in the game!", so they made the model, and other things needed and submitted it to be added to the game.)

I just think this good idea turned into a shitty situation because of the coding that Valve did, which originally was broken and gave it to a server full of 16 people at once the first day and had to be stopped before it became widespread, said it was random when it was actually certain times(which they could've lead into different story lines in TF2 since it has become a very story rich game with videos, hidden links, stuff in the coding that people actually look for because they purposely give away future information and MORE hidden stuff in, and messages 24/7 everywhere on the website), and someone leaked the times had to have worked for Valve..

haha exactly what i was thinking

I AM A HOMOSEXUAL rep on the Bioshock quote

Once upon a time I ran around with cheats bunny hopping around with a scout no-scope headshotting anyone and everyone to see what they were about. I did it almost every day in that Italy only server that had about 50 different remakes of Italy ranging from obscure to pretty close and well made. They made it a VAC server because of me, kinda felt happy that I forced a non-VAC server to go VAC secured. After that I ran around on other shady non-VAC servers looking for a new home to cheat on and eventually stopped. I started again a few months after that wondering what is new and how everything works(It had a rear-view mirror, I shit you not.. No clue why you need one with speed hacks and a perfect aimbot, but whatever.), and went into a cpl_mill server with bots, OR SO I THOUGHT! I ran around once again shooting people's faces through walls bunny hopping and when someone said "Hey *cheater name* nice cheats, can you give me a link?" I flipped out typed status and seen VAC secured and almost had a heart attack for 2-3 weeks waiting for me to get VAC banned when I woke up and checked every day.

Now I just use our custom PSA cheats that work for 1.6/CZ/CSS/TF2/L4D/L4D2/ and whatever else game I decide to play that Tucker seems to be using a little too blatantly lately with his 3.5+kdr.

Damnit nerd baiter...i had my hopes up...

I think that its valve´s mistake for two reasons, they have snitches in theyr developing staff and they fucked up with the algorythms for the drop of said item, VAC ban was too much imo, i say take them wrenches off and re-plan the drop formulae.

Punishing those players like that is out of hand imo, what they could do is ask for the snitch and cut his head off.

Robin Walker, the head of TF2, actually gave the guy his phone number and they talked. The ban is most likely to stay on all players, the wrench is removed on about 4 players, and he said there was no interest in finding out who told him the list.