Classic VAC bans cheaters weeks after the fact. VAC Live is Valve's attempt to act during the match itself. Here is what it does, what happens to your game when it triggers, and why it still doesn't catch everyone.
VAC vs VAC Live
Classic VAC looks for known cheat software and bans in delayed waves, so cheat makers can't easily tell which version got detected. That delay is why a cheater can play for weeks before the ban lands. We explain the details in how VAC detection works.
VAC Live arrived with CS2. Instead of waiting, it can react while the match is still being played: when it is confident a player is cheating, it ends the match early.
What happens when VAC Live ends your match
- The match stops, usually with a message that it was cancelled because of a VAC issue.
- The cheater's account is dealt with by Valve.
- Valve's aim is that the result doesn't count against the honest players, so you don't lose rank for a game a cheater ruined.
If it happens to you, there is nothing to do: queue again. If you want to know who it was, the players from that match are still in your match history, and you can check all of them at once with the CS2 match checker.
Why it doesn't catch everyone
VAC Live has to be very sure before it ends a match, because a false trigger ruins a game for ten people. Early on, it did misfire: shortly after CS2 launched, some players using very high mouse sensitivity settings were wrongly flagged, and Valve reversed those bans. Since then it has been tuned to be cautious, which means subtle cheats (closet aim assistance, wallhacks used carefully) often slip through.
Hardware-based cheats are the hardest case. A DMA cheat reads the game's memory from a second device, so software on your PC never sees it running.
What still works when VAC doesn't
- Check the account. Bans on record, account age, hours and rank history often give a cheater away. Use the cheater checker.
- Report with evidence. A report with the match share code lets human reviewers watch the demo. See how to report a cheater in CS2.
- Play where the anti-cheat is stronger. FACEIT's kernel anti-cheat catches far more. We compare them in FACEIT anti-cheat vs VAC.