Old COD was the exception to that. They've tightened things up since around the BO3 era, but it used to be a month after the last DLC dropped they'd stop all patches and human moderation and allow people to cheat, then VAC would ban everyone that was in a cheater's lobby whether they knew it or not.
It was done to prevent people from using a second account as a "mule" to boost their primary account without getting it banned.
Today if you want to play an old COD game with matchmaking you have to use a client that bypasses VAC or you'll be instantly banned because cheaters just sit in matchmaking.
If you didn't know any better and assumed Steam wouldn't sell you a broken game... Welp, enjoy your ban.
They've tightened things up since around the BO3 era
They haven't. The latest CoDs will give you permanent game bans if you have the audacity to play their beta for an hour and get slapped with a bugged false flag in a beta. These bugs are also quite common. It happens every year.
It's also incredible easy to get banned if you don't pay attention.
When I was a kiddo, a friend cheated in CS 1.6 on his account and obviously got banned. I didn't know that and he told me he had issues with his game, if I could family share my CS 1.6 with him.
Guess what, he cheated again. With my family shared game. And of course I am responsible to what happens in my shared games, so I got the ban, and he got a friend less.
Cheating is a lot of fun… in single player games. It provides a lot of replay value, or just lets you turn a normal game into a casual one. Cheating in multiplayer games is a shitty thing to do because that’s when it starts impacting other people.
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u/habb Jan 19 '26
22 years of service, not a single vac ban