Anyone banned gets forwarded to Half-Life 2.

They have a PC, they should be playing TF2 anyways.

Doesn't VAC banning do this sort stuff all the time? Also if they're using steam then why aren't they on TF2?

Nothing to see here. VAC bans are legit, and often hit when you've already forgot what you did. Thats the POINT.

With all that work on his desk I'm surprised he gets time to play games.

When enough people get banned from a game and form a larger group, I'm inclined to believe they were banned for a reason and that a larger history than the most recent offense was taken into account. There's no such thing as an arbitrary ban, though who gets punished and who doesn't might seem that way, there's usually only anecdotal evidence to support such claims.

Chances are that one little thing you thought you might have gotten banned for is accompanied by a bunch of other little things you should be banned for. And no matter how much crying or gnashing of teeth goes down, Valve doesn't owe you shit for an explanation. This is what the EULA is for. When you accepted it, you accepted any actions they might take against you as just.

And that's the way it is, no amount of crying will change that. You wanted to play these games badly enough that you signed the EULA when you made a membership. You're bound to it, for better or for worse.

Also, as others have pointed out - there are better games on Steam. Maybe you should sample what else is out there, as you may be surprised to find something far more balanced and fun to play.

Well, VAC did have it's share of false positives. But most cases, that were easily proved, were in the innocents favor. So, what we have now is that people were unwittingly using some mods (and activision is against any kind of modding) that they've either installed themselves, or that were spread like an infection because of the stupid p2p system MW2 has.
In any way, MW2 on PC has a lot of bullshit and all of it comes from Activision decisions. I won't be surprised if now is the same

Automated hack-catchers registering false positives? Maybe. People who already cheat at online games willing to lie their heads off if they think it'll let them keep on cheating? Definitely.

@ Gilthalas - Agree entirely (should have finished my comment with /sarcasm as most of my points are simply broken gameplay).

Along with the whole "I'm a soldier, I can fire 2 shotguns, one in each hand, at once and not BREAK MY FUCKING WRISTS!" Dual wielding hasn't been cool since "Blood".

So no one can ever be unbanned from this VAC business? That's kinda fucked up. More so than the news story itself imho :S

man they should make something like a 24h running server that could be make by anyone with a anti-cheat program that update every week... noooooooo that just crazy

I like MW2 on PC. I guess that makes me one of very few people.

That said I don't think I'm going to play until Valve issues a statement saying this most recent wave was banning due to glitching/third party tools/previously unbanned aimbots. I don't want to risk a false positive. VAC bans on their own are pretty bad, but the "ban(s) on record" scarlet letter that gets added to your profile is terrible, especially if you've done nothing wrong.

At least someone is doing something on the PC version, its so easy to tell who is playing from a modded xbox or who is using hacks on the console version. But will it get fixed, nope not by a long shot

yay blackops! yay servers!

Haha Jim, we both know there's no such thing as an "innocent" Modern Warfare player.

if i were to purchase a game from steam, only to be banned from the online portions, i'd stop using the service. they wouldn't get another penny from me. i'm sure a few of these banned individuals are thinking the same thing.

AFAIK: This is what happens when you join a "dedicated server" or something similar running on IWnet that has a few files modified. You get those files autodownloaded with no way to stop them, and you get banned for it. Completely random, you might have been matchmaked with a hacked server, you might not. The only way to prevent it is to not play.

I've run into a couple of modded servers that end up changing the mechanics of the game, one of those modded servers boosted my level from 41 - 70 by the end of one round. I wonder if maybe these people unwitting joined one of these servers?

@NINE_X

I guess it all depends upon exactly what the server modified. I looked through a log of someone's console output and saw that there were a metric shitton of files that failed to verify.

Although that point was a bit moot, considering that the console unlocker itself, despite giving 0% advantage, was VAC banned. IW/Acti really, really hate mods of any sort by the looks of things.

@amtalx

I know you can one hand them, but one in each hand? Fuck no.

We shoot skeet with upside down shotty's fun times. Playing with guns is for winners, and fools.

Well, on 360 it's easy enough to accidentally get into a hacked/broken game, and have your score broken on the leaderboards. Doesn't surprise me in the least that it'd be just as easy to accidentally get into a lobby where VAC tags them.

I'm sure there are no wallhackers in the PC version of MW2 . . . Because a bunch of those e-thugs just got banned.

Seriously, there has been a huge spike in cheaters lately, glad to know they may have gotten what they deserved.

@Jon B

well the whole point of IWNet was to prevent such things from happening and produce accurate tracking of a players stats. Companies fail to realize that this is impossible on the PC.

Sheer number of banned people? If you call 20 people and 10 threads a lot then i guess the article is accurate.

I don't want MW2 players on my TF2.

It's sort of like how I appreciate that WoW takes a lot of the shitty people away from games like FFXI (and soon to be FFXIV).