A German player of Counter-Strike 2 was banned on Steam because a specific feature of his graphics card is causing problems. He has CS content worth over 100,000 Euros in his Steam inventory.
In Counter-Strike 2, it’s not just about skillfully shooting your opponent in the head or planting a bomb. A large part of the game revolves around skins – whether it’s camouflages or stickers for your weapons or different gloves or knives.
Many players buy, sell or trade skins that can have considerable value. But what happens if you get banned in Counter-Strike? This is what an Austrian CS2 player experienced, even though he claims to have not violated any rules.
Who is it about? The user “NeonKeksHD” is an Austrian skin trader. That means he buys and sells CS2 skins to make a profit. He regularly posts videos on YouTube that discuss trading skins and regularly achieve between 2,000 and 20,000 views.
His Steam inventory is reportedly worth over 100,000 Euros (via YouTube).
On October 13, NeonKeks wrote on X.com, formerly Twitter, that he received a VAC ban in the middle of a CS2 match. The VAC exclusion can also be seen on his profile on Steam. Accounts with a VAC ban cannot sell or trade skins.
CS2 Trader suspects feature of his graphics card as reason for ban
Why was he banned? NeonKeks suspects that he was wrongly banned and that the exclusion was due to a feature of his graphics card. CS2 developer Valve warned last weekend against using said feature as it can lead to a VAC ban.
The feature in question is a setting called “Anti-Lag+” that owners of an AMD graphics card can use since a recently released driver update. You can currently only use Anti-Lag+ with AMD graphics cards from the Radeon RX 7000 series.
Further reports indicate that owners of an AMD graphics card also face a ban on Steam in other games if they use Anti-Lag+, since the feature is apparently recognized as a cheat program in the games.
If you are playing with a new AMD graphics card, you should uninstall the latest update or disable Anti-Lag+ in the settings if you want to be on the safe side.
What happens to banned accounts? As Valve announced via the official CS2 account on X.com, the CS2 developer aims to identify the accounts that were wrongly banned due to Anti-Lag+ and reverse the bans.
Just recently, Valve reversed a ban from an account that owns 1.4 million dollars worth of CS content. However, the ban had a completely different background:
