I logged into my steam account on July 30th to update the platform and my games after having not played in about a week.

As soon as I have logged in a box pops up informing me that my account has been banned because VAC detected me using cheats (Sorry I don't have an image of this). My first reaction was just shock. I sat there staring at the message hardly believing it. In fact, I didn't believe it, so I restarted steam to set things straight. The same message appeared.

I went into my settings (pissed off at this time) to see if anything was different in there. I was desperate for something to be deceiving me. All I found was this message in my Account Settings tab:

After that I tried joining some games. My game list was not a very pretty sight. Nearly every server was off limits to me now.

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You know that feeling you get when you realize you just wasted quite a large amount of money? It's horrible isn't it? And it sticks around for quite a while. That feeling hit me once I clicked on one of those servers with the ominous red sign. I will never forget it.

For the record I own (and have now been banned from online play):

  • Half-Life 2
  • Half-Life 2: Episode One
  • Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
  • Counter-Strike: Source
  • Day of Defeat: Source
  • The entire Valve back catalog including: Every single Half-Life, Condition Zero, Day of Defeat, and many others.

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And just for those of you who are curious. Clicking on the link for more details took me to a list of everything I now could not play. On that list there was another link for more details. It took me to this steam site which kindly informs everyone with a bright green banner that "All VAC bans are permanent." They really enjoy rubbing it in. The rest of the page was fairly usless.

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