Valve Ban Type

11/12/2026 06:10 etthnn#1
Hello,

I was just wondering when playing csg2 if I were to get banned do valve ban hardware or is it only ever an account ban I’ve seen mixed stories?
11/12/2026 07:34 hypermotion#2
valve generally issues vac bans and game bans at the account level, not traditional hwid bans like you see with some other anti-cheats, a vac ban permanently restricts the affected account from playing on vac-secured servers for the relevant game, while cs2 game bans are handled separately

there are a few exceptions worth mentioning though, especially accounts linked through the same phone number or steam family sharing, which valve explicitly covers in their documentation

so the short answer is that cs2 doesn’t publicly use a standard permanent hardware ban system, but that doesn’t mean valve’s enforcement is limited to simply checking one account in isolation

also, vac bans, game bans and competitive cooldowns aren’t the same thing, which is probably where some of the conflicting information comes from