VAC will get an insane new feature in Counter-Strike 2

VAC is getting a massive upgrade in Counter-Strike 2, including a highly-requested feature that will save everyone valuable time.

Running into a cheater is the fastest way to cut your Counter-Strike: Global Offensive session short. While Valve has made big steps to fix the problem, including massive ban waves, an engine swap is the perfect time to implement new solutions. According to players in the limited beta test, VAC is getting a big upgrade in Counter-Strike 2 with live bans for detected cheaters.

The news was publicly reported by CSGO social media personality Aquarius, who found new strings in Counter-Strike 2 files that hint at expended VAC capabilities. The string involves some kind of new system named VAC Live, which, as its name suggests, can ban players in the middle of active online matches.

This is something that Valve Anti-Cheat could already do in CSGO, but CS2 will introduce the ability for VAC to stop matches as they play out. For example, if the game detects that you are playing against a cheater after the first buy round, the game will announce the player who is cheating, ban them, and end the match all in one fell swoop. Of course, that assumes that Valve intends to fully implement the new strings.

In the current live CSGO client, players in games where others are VAC banned must still play out the match or risk an abandon penalty. For both squads, this usually amounts to a lot of wasted time. This is especially true for games still in the early rounds. While small, VAC Live will be a major quality-of-life improvement and prevent cheaters from doing harm even after they are banned.

VAC Live will change everything in Counter-Strike 2

The effectiveness of Valve Anti-Cheat is a hot topic in the CSGO community, but there’s no doubt that Valve will be ramping up VAC with the launch of Counter-Strike 2.

In addition, switching to a new engine could cause the majority of existing cheats to get reset entirely. The most common types of cheats used in CSGO take advantage of the Source engine to transmit information to third-party programs and adjust players’ inputs to give them an unfair advantage. Source 2 uses different processing methods than the original engine, so many existing cheats may no longer work.

All of these factors, along with a slew of exciting mechanics, will make the summer launch of Counter-Strike 2 the best time to hop back into the tactical shooter.