Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hackers have received a record number of bans

Hackers now have a reason to fear for their Steam accounts, as July broke records as the highest month in history for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive bans.

Steam Database found that more than 135 thousand game bans were handed out by the end of July, meaning that the in-game report and overwatch case systems were working in full. Basically, when a player is reported via the right-click function on the scoreboard, their case gets put into Overwatch–no, not the Blizzard game- Overwatch is a judicial system that allows the community to determine if a user is innocent or guilty of through brief demo reviews. Possible allegations include griefing, aim hacking, wall hacking, or other types of hacking, like scripting. Abusive text/voice chat is also an option to be banned for, but it’s less frequent and is handled by Valve.

The record for Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) bans is still held by the month of June 2016 at 176,120, and this July only saw 147,796 VAC bans as a result of the 2017 Steam Summer Sale. VAC bans are different from game bans, as VAC bans are executed through anti-cheat software on Valve-secured servers, whereas game bans are given through a majority of votes in Overwatch.