Valve Anti-Cheat
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Valve Anti-Cheat, abbreviated as VAC, is an anti-cheat solution developed by Valve Corporation as a component of the Steam game development platform.
Those who are VAC Banned cannot enter a VAC-enabled server. However, this only applies to the engine the game uses. For example, if you are banned on Counter-Strike or Half-Life, only games which use the GoldSource engine will be affected. You can still play games and connect to secure servers on games that do not use the same engine. In addition, those who are VAC Banned have all non-purchased items deleted from their backpack.
VAC has several versions.
VAC is module based. Most clients only see a fraction of all the modules the system has.
As with any Anti-Cheat, VAC is not perfect. Certain hacks may be able to slip through the cracks, if only for awhile. Once VAC has detected a user hacking, it may take from a few days to a few months before said user is banned from secure servers. This is done to prevent the cheat developer that made the hack from pinpointing the exact cause of the ban. Additionally, VAC runs differently on Linux machines, making it much less effective and easily bypassable. Valve has not talked about any fix for this as of yet. But in a recent Q&A with Valve CEO Gabe Newell, he has said that Valve Anti-Cheat is one of the things that they will be working on improving in the future.
