With the Summer Sale wrapping up last week, and many people buying discounted titles by the bundle, it now seems that Steam has banned around 40,000 accounts from their service, mostly due to cheating.
Over at the SteamDB, the site picked up the mass banning through VAC, with around 30,000 bans being given before 12 PM Thursday. SteamDB reports that the usual range for these bans lies between 3,000 to 4,000 accounts being banned, but Steam delivered 40,000 VAC bans due to cheating. The last time so many accounts were banned was in October, 2016, and that wave took down 15,227 accounts.
So what causes such a high number of accounts to be banned so shortly after a big sale on Steam? Well, many gamers create dummy accounts and purchase cheap copies of Counter-Strike: GO and Dota 2 on separate accounts. It’s here on these accounts that hacks are tested, cheats applied and used online, and instead of worrying about their main account being given a VAC ban, the dummy account takes the fall and the cheater moves onto another account to continue cheating.
I’m happy to see Steam is being active on reprimanding cheaters, many times, they are the reason so many gamers get frustrated and ditch a game, often leaving before being able to fully enjoy the title. I hope we continue to see VAC bans preventing cheating from the public eye.
