VACNET Anti-cheat
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as a source for how Valve uses machine learning on player behavior to detect cheating.
What it is
3kliksphilip summarizes Valve's GDC talk on VACNet, a deep-learning system that flags CS:GO cheaters and feeds the Overwatch review queue. It covers Trust Factor, VAC, and how the data is collected and analyzed.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2019 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends cameronbrown · 2020-07 · on “Valve secrets spill over in new Steam documentary app”
If you're interested, Valve uses deep learning model called VACnet to "watch" every player on their servers[0][1]. If any dodgy gameplay is detected, it gets submitted into a moderation queue called Overwatch[2], which is basically delegates the decisions to ban cheaters community. It's really cool how they've gamified this. [0] [LINK] [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Cites cameronbrown · 2019-07 · on “Respawn will deal with Apex Legends cheaters by making them fight each other”
> They also have a neural network setup that constantly scans match logs for cheaters For those wondering what this is referring to, it's a system called VACNet[0] presented at GDC last year. [0] [LINK] [1] [this video]
Cites kllrnohj · 2021-07 · on “Valve Steam Deck”
[this video] Valve is already using machine learning to analyze player mouse movements across all games to look for "inhuman" patterns and send those directly to the community-staffed manual review process called overwatch.
Cites judge2020 · 2021-09 · on “Epic launches anti-cheat support for Linux, Mac, and Steam Deck”
Worth noting that the VAC games on that list, CS:GO, TF2, and Dota 2, have effectively given up on actually detecting and preventing cheaters and now rely on server-based or community-consensus methods of finding and punishing cheaters (with TF2 being the exception with how little maintenance Valve performs on it). Both CS:GO and Dota 2 have a report+overwatch system where users watch a replay to determine if someone is exhibiting suspicious cheating behavior. The server side of this is VACnet where it uses heuristics like mouse movement or [in Dota] clicking out of regular camera bounds to detect these cheaters and expedite them to the Overwatch queue. You can readily download the biggest s
Cites judge2020 · 2023-04 · on “The Day Windows Died”
That's not what I said - my point is that companies with a relaxed security baseline (ie. not having a dedicated team of people tasked with investigating cheats and improving their anti-cheat system) tend to invite an increased number of cheaters into their games, and I back this up with real events. - These companies will send cease-and-desist letters to cheat makers instead of working to detect their cheats (Joduska.me ceased operations due to a Riot C&D, and Bossland GmbH was actually sued and lost). If these cheats were instead detected and users banned on a continuous basis, no lawsuits would be needed. - CS:GO implemented (as in, almost a decade ago) an "Overwatch" review system to all
Critical willis936 · 2020-01 · on “EA is permanently banning Linux players on Battlefield V”
There exist good solutions, but none of these companies have the competence or will to actually solve the problem. It’s security theatre a la malware. “Hey everyone install this rootkit to pretend like we’re preventing cheaters. Don’t worry about the keylogging and screenshot uploading.” What’s most surprising is that the vast majority of gamers aren’t outraged by this at all, despite repeated demonstrations of untrustworthiness by anticheat companies. [this video]