"I am just grateful that Valve can at least see that having a drop off period of it showing on public profiles is a nice change. "I understand why Valve shows it, I get it," he said. As a result, Morningstar would have to jump around from server-to-server, hoping they'd find one that would allow his profile to join. Some games would implement plug-ins to scan Steam profiles for a VAC ban, even if a VAC ban didn't explicitly ban you from that particular game. Though he moved away from playing Call of Duty, the VAC ban followed him in other ways. Whatever Morningstar's intentions, he was "cheating." It's possible that field-of-view isn't what got Morningstar banned but the program allowing the change tripped up Valve's anti-cheat measures. Unfortunately, it wasn't clear what modifications would get you banned- just take a look at a Google search for confusion of field-of-view modifications for Modern Warfare 2. On the PC, it was common for hardcore Call of Duty players to use a game's developer console (often brought down by hitting the ~ key) to modify elements like field-of-view and model placement, touches meant to enhance the experience for both players and viewers.īut with the release of Modern Warfare 2 and the rise of consoles being the primary audience for Call of Duty, the interface was overhauled, the developer console was removed, and players were forced to dig into the game's private configuration files to bring everything back. A team that, at one point, wasn't far from being able to make enough money to make things interesting. That part of about Call of Duty is true, and it got then-17-year-old Nick Morningstar banned, even though he was part of a competitive Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare team. People shut up quickly when you pointed out the fact that the VAC ban was older than their accounts." "Then, it started to become hilarious as people would get so flustered and could not accept any reason that someone would beat them or be better than them. He eventually opened a new Steam account and re-bought Counter-Strike.
A Counter-Strike clan was happy to have him, for example, until they discovered his profile-and kicked him out. The problem? When he'd win, they'd look up his profile, and notice the VAC banning. Fortunately for him, the recently released Counter-Strike: Source was exempt from his ban, so he started playing.
Though the ban was annoying, he'd spent a couple hundred dollars on games, and figured the sunk cost was worth dealing with the consequences of the VAC banning.
"I tried the cheat, saw how ridiculous it was and put it away, didn't even play a full match. It just didn't feel right and made me feel very bad about myself." "I then remembered what happened and kicked myself for forgetting about it," said Kurz. Unfortunately for Kurz, he forgot about the hack, and later, jumped into an online Half-Life match, only to be kicked out. (At the time, that wasn't very many.) People were careful, using dummy accounts and playing multiplayer matches via LAN, preventing VAC from picking up on what they were doing. While attending a LAN party, friends passed around a hack that'd unlock every game on Steam. A Modern Warfare 2 ban does not apply to Modern Warfare 3.)ġ1 years ago, 15-year-old Andrew Kurz fell into the same hole. (In most cases, however, you're only banned from the game you cheated in. And since it was a Valve-developed game, he was automatically banned from a bunch of other games, including Team Fortress Classic. His brief journey into the world of cheating suddenly meant he couldn't play on any server with Valve's anti-cheating software, which is where most legitimate players hang out. "It just didn't feel right and made me feel very bad about myself."įull match or not, it didn't take long for Valve to slap Oliveira with a VAC (Valve anti-cheat system) ban, an automated system for tracking down cheaters. "I tried the cheat, saw how ridiculous it was and put it away, didn't even play a full match," he said. It was easy enough to cheat in Counter-Strike, and the prospect of spooking his buddies proved too tempting.
Oliveira had been playing Counter-Strike before the game's landmark version 1.6 patch in 2003, when Counter-Strike patches became tied to Steam, and could often be found running around with a regular group of online friends.
"I had always been curious about it would feel like," he said.
Hiago Oliveira was 17-years-old when he logged onto Steam and decided it was time to answer a question he'd wondered for a while: What's it like to cheat in Counter-Strike? Valve did not respond to my request for comment on this story.