So I've fianlly decided to settle this once and for all with a trouble ticket (Silly me). Well, I figured it was a better shot than being ignored on the forums, although it turns out not to be much better.

  • I play steam games on and off and own virtually all the valve games. I recently started up steam after having not played for a few weeks and got the message that I was banned by VAC for cheating.

    Now, I know the forums say your system "didn't make a mistake" but I beg to differ. No system is perfect and with all the crappy stuff out there for windows, I know that errors are made.

    I have never run a cheat on my computer for any valve or steam game. I have not given my password away to anyone and only run steam on my account on my personal computers (my past two desktops and my new laptop).

    I program some and often run many programs in the background, but nothing dangerous or virus like. I run some less common programs like foobar2000 instead of the more popular winamp. I am racking my brain for anything that could have cause this, but I have nothing.

    I am asking you because I love your games so very much and have done nothing wrong. That, and I cannot just go out and buy all the valve games all over again because of this.

    There must be some system you have set up to catch false positives. Anything you can do to help would be much appreciated.

    If it helps any, I run Spybot S&D, AVG Free, PC Tools Firewall Plus, PC Tools Spyware Doctor, and a program called deskpins that can put any window to "always on top." I run these programs at ALL times.

    **personal contact info goes here says I**

    Thank you,
    **I put my name here**

Well that should do the trick, now to just wait for a reply. It's amazing how fast these guys work on the weekdays because it only took them from Tuesday to Friday to respond. But hey, who's keeping track?


At approximately 10:18:57am PST on Tuesday August 3rd 2007 I received a reply. A basic cut and paste general response, but it was a response nonetheless. So what has it taken them three days to tell me? Well,

  •  Their "system indicates that [my] account has been permanently banned" - I'm glad we're on the same page at least
  • "VAC has confirmed that the ban on [my] account was applied legitimately" - Huh? I know I was playing legitimately at least.
  • I can still play single player games or in unsecured servers - about 1.4% of servers are unsecured*
  • Should I ever buy their games again I should reformat...

I still find myself in shock every time I read that last one. THEY are telling ME to reformat my computer if I ever want to play THEIR games again? - Why did I put all the pronouns in caps? I don't think it emphasized anything really.

Click to enlarge!! Read what they sent me! Now!

And since, as they nicely pointed out, I obviously don't know of any cheats on my system, the best option would be reformatting if I don't want my account banned next time! Hooray!

I think it's going to take a few more emails to get through to them. 


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