CS2 players are reportedly getting hit with a ban if they use an AMD GPU and enable the Anti-Lag+ feature. Valve confirms that CS2 players with an AMD GPU enabling this feature will result in them getting a VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) ban on their Steam account.
Valve confirmed this on the morning of October 13 via the official Counter-Strike 2 X account. The company is now warning players to not enable Anti-Lag+ if they want to continue playing without issue. According to Valve, the reason the ban happens is because it messes around in the engine dll functions of the game. VAC sees this as a no-no and swiftly brings the ban hammer down.
As of right now there’s no way around this problem. Other than turning off Anti-Lag+ before you play. Assuming you haven’t already been hit with a ban.
Valve says it can reverse the ban for CS2 players once AMD ships an update
For those who have already received a ban, it seems a fix is coming. Sometime. The downside is that it revolves around AMD shipping an update that addresses the issue that VAC is picking up. And it doesn’t appear that there’s any sort of timeframe for that listed.
Worth noting is that after the latest driver update is when Anti-Lag+ was added. It’s also enabled in the GPU settings by default. Which means if you haven’t poked around in there to check anything but you did update, it’s on. As engadget points out you can easily disable this with the Alt+L shortcut. Though we’d still recommend making sure it’s actually off before you boot up the game.
This situation seems to (rightfully) frustrating players. With many suggesting AMD should have accounted for this kind of a situation. Though some also seem to place the blame on Valve and its anti-cheat software. Either way, players have a clear path to enjoy CS2 without the fear of a ban. And hopefully the issue is fixed fast so Anti-Lag+ can be re-enabled.
2023-10-14 15:05:04