Had a cheater on the enemy team in a comp last week, no scoping everyone with a SSG, had a very racist Steam name too.
Why is Volvo so lax on cheaters?
Everything said can only be considered speculation. I think the main problem is that cheat developers are exceedingly outpacing anti-cheat measures. Valve's case is a bit unique; they took a strong stance against kernel-level anti-cheats, and breaking that will tarnish their good-guy character. Then there is their own Steam Community Market, and that has thresholds. Valve would have to ban a Steam user with the utmost certainty. Yes, there have been trade blocks and account blocks, and largely it has to do with exploitation. Valve can't simply ban a user who has, say, R10 000 in their CS2 inventory; there is enough there to take Valve to the courts. That inventory ties directly into the game.
It has been a long while since Valve issued a permanent ban. What they do ban are the market manipulators.
Valve is also expanding into the Linux ecosystem, and you can't impose measures there that will go against the Linux ethos unless you want to rile everyone up. At this point in time, their AI anti-cheat does not seem to know what is what. I think their training data at intervals is becoming corrupted. Perhaps that is why they brought back a human overwatch system.
There are so many cheats hosted on places like GitHub, GitLab, etc. Some old thing that is to this day 'undedected'. Then there are external and hardware cheats... I am aware that the latter two have a market here; we do have cheat sellers here. This booming cheat market has a share here.
I don't know what Valve is planning to do. They don't speak themselves, but they do have people in the community who handle the anti-cheat PR. I have very much started to dislike news being conveyed by third parties.
Streamers, more so the popular ones, also seem to have more rights than everyone else. They complain about a cheater, and the cheater is gone; ordinary people are told to get good. This is something I see all the time on social media. I can't even share a recording where a cheat is observable without getting it removed or being silenced. It is stupid.
I think Valve's mindset is simple: people who want to play competitively must go and use a service like FACEIT. Everyone else must deal with it.
What is true: the more you experience cheating, the more you will see cheating everywhere. The FACT that a player can rage in CS2 without consequence nowadays is mind-boggling. Rage hacking isn't the biggest problem. The problem is cheaters being able to manipulate a server and the server–client relationship. Then extra-sensory cheats like aim hacks, radar, etc. The cheats that have been labeled as legit cheats. Backtracking is very much a thing. How Valve does not detect this on their servers is beyond me, and they have told people in seminars that they have all the player data in the world.
Eh. I don't think Valve sees this as a priority, even though the situation is worsening. From a commercial aspect, they need to make sure that their marketplace is compliant and that is where their priorities are. Reducing bots is a bigger goal than reducing cheaters.
Also, bots are running rampant. There are also way too many cheater raids in casual lobbies.
I guess Valve doesn't like my anti-cheat rhetoric.
