Yesterday, I was playing a round of Counter-Strike 2 and something odd happened – someone on the enemy team actually got kicked from the game due to VAC, a very rare sight in my hundreds of hours of playtime this year. As it turns out, a lot of players were getting booted from games yesterday and now, we know exactly what is going on. Valve is clamping down on high-end keyboard features being used in-game. 

Valve is now banning Counter-Strike 2 players from using keyboard features like the Razer Huntsman's ‘Snap Tap'. Wooting has a similar feature, which is also seeing players getting caught up in the VAC system. These features automate multiple button presses to perfectly strafe, taking some of the skill-element out of movement in CS2. For instance, typically strafing requires a complete press and depress of the opposing directional buttons, so if you are moving side to side, you would need to be tapping A and D rapidly. However, features like Snap Tap take this element out, allowing users to strafe and counter-strafe from a single button press, without the need for spamming. While this can be a great accessibility feature in a lot of games, in a competitive game like Counter-Strike, this level of automation is seen as an unfair competitive advantage.

As a result, Valve has now banned all “automation” in Counter-Strike 2, whether it comes via scripting or hardware, like the Razer Huntsman keyboarrd. Moving forward, “players suspected of automating multiple player actions from a single game input may be kicked from their match”. As I noticed yesterday, this practise already seemed to be in place hours before Valve's official announcement.

Currently, while players are getting kicked and asked to switch off any software that may interfere with Counter-Strike 2, permanent bans do not seem to be on the table at this stage. Chances are, Valve is giving users an opportunity to catch up on the news for now, and may issue harsher punishment later down the line.

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KitGuru Says: Do you think this ban is fair, or are there other areas Valve should be focusing on to improve VAC and fair online play?

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