CS2 cheater crashes server after being reported, sneakily avoiding VAC Live ban

Cheaters often find a way to dodge bans.

Smoke grenades begin to deploy on Overpass in CS2.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

A CS2 cheater is tearing the servers apart in Europe—literally—and dodging getting banned by the new VAC Live anti-cheating tool.

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Thus far, this cheater has ruined the matches of two prominent members of the CS community—German streamer and YouTuber TrilluXe and former professional player turned caster Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill. TrilluXe shared a clip of the moment he reported the cheater after getting killed by an unrealistic wall-bang on Nuke, and a few seconds later, the server crashed.

After TrilluXe called out the CS2 cheater on Twitter, SPUNJ replied to him and added that the same person was in his lobby three times and crashed the server in all three before the games even started. Our best guess is that the cheater didn’t want to use their cheats against SPUNJ because he’s a popular figure in the community.

By crashing the server, the cheater effectively prevents VAC Live from triggering and landing the ban. This new anti-cheating tool that was added to CS2 can ban a cheater moments after they’re reported and even cancel the match. The player base got its first glimpse of VAC Live’s capability in June when a clip of a cheater getting instantly banned on Mirage went viral.

Related: CS2 has one anti-cheating tool that will radically improve your games, according to leaker

One CS2 fan wondered in response to TrilluXe’s tweet how this cheater who ruined his match got access to the CS2 beta with Valve keeping the access so limited. But as someone suggested in the replies, it’s likely the cheater bought an account with CS2 access for this exact purpose. Because access is so limited, some of the lucky players who were blessed with beta access are selling their accounts.

Now that Valve knows players can crash the server to avoid a VAC Live ban, it’s likely that the developers will try to find a way to block this from happening to keep cheaters out of CS2. Valve lost control of cheaters in CS:GO, which caused a lot of players to move on to third-party matchmaking sites over the years, and the company is seemingly focused on improving the official matchmaking experience in the new game coming out this summer.

Author
Image of Leonardo Biazzi
Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.