Why Valve really did remove VAC from CS2 and Dota 2

VAC was recently removed from Valve’s major esports titles CS2 and Dota 2, and that could be huge for both games.

VAC is Valve’s anti-cheat that guards in-house titles like Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and more against cheaters. However, it doesn’t have the brightest track record in terms of filtering out the bad actors. For years, players have been complaining about the sub-par anti-cheat, so when it was mysteriously removed from Steam files, fans’ hopes were instantly raised.

On October 23, eagle-eyed data miners noticed a curious detail in Steam files. A VAC removed update appeared under changed categories and remained that way for a few hours, leaving players to cook up wild assumptions.

Why did Valve remove VAC from CS2 and Dota 2?

Valve hasn’t addressed the mysterious removal of VAC from Dota 2 or CS2, but it’s likely part of maintenance or an update. However, it’s worth noting that VAC usually doesn’t shut down during routine maintenance, which leaves room for speculation.

VAC remained disabled for about 12 hours in Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and Team Fortress 2 before it was activated again on October 24 in the middle of the night. If it were just a glitch, the reactivation wouldn’t take this long, as a disabled anti-cheat system would be flagged almost immediately. Some fans speculated that Valve is replacing VAC with VACnet 3.0, an updated version of the same anti-cheat. However, VAC came back up with the same title.

That leaves two possibilities. Either Valve has secretly upgraded the anti-cheat system, or VACnet 3.0 is indeed in development, and its temporary shutdown is related to that. The developer could also be collecting data from cheaters in order to improve the upcoming version of VAC, but it’s all speculation and should be taken as such.

Whether it was removed for improvements or an upgrade will become clear in the coming weeks, depending on game performance and the frequency of cheater encounters.