Concerns with Steam.

So I'm really loving Steam but am slightly concerned about their VAC banning. I've seen SOOO many posts on many different forums about people who have been banned but claim to have never cheated. Can this really happen? I saw one guy who said that he'd been using steam for 4 years and just recently got banned. I cannot imagine using a service for so long only to lose everything for something you didn't do.

Anyways, I'm never going to cheat in an online game, but I'm wondering what I could do wrong by accident that could cause a VAC ban. For example, earlier this month I let a friend use my credit card to buy a game. He tried to and it didn't work, so I ended up just gifting the game through my account. My account then gets disabled because I used a credit card on a different account. How does this even make sense? What if I let my wife use OUR credit card on her steam account? Would I get banned? Would she get banned? (theoretical).

Anyways, I'd just like to get some thoughts from some long time steam users. I'd also really appreciate advice for things that I should avoid (i.e. certain game servers, obviously not tampering with files, etc). Thanks in advance.

Don't cheat in online multiplayer games and you won't get banned. I've been using Steam since 2003 and have never had a problem with it.

It will never ban you by mistake. The only time this has happened is with MW2. And they got unbanned and given L4D2.

They are idiots for cheating and blaming VAC. You have nothing to fear. :)

I've seen SOOO many posts on many different forums about people who have been banned but claim to have never cheated.Echo13791

Yeah, Just try not to offend anyone or hack, and you should be Ok. :DSaberhearts

There's nothing to worry about.

VAC only kicks in if you cheat, and all VAC does is ban you from playing that specific game on VAC enabled servers. It won't ban you from using Steam all together. The people who get banned and claim to have never cheated are lying, plain and simple.

Your Steam account only gets an outright ban if there's suspicious or illegal activity going on with your account.

I've been using Steam since the day Half-Life 2 was released, and I've never had any problems like this.

Been using steam for quite a few years now... personally I use a family members credit card even though I don't live at home simply because I do not have one. She uses it on her steam account as well, no problems so far. Don't cheat in games and your fine :D

Yeah they sure "Didn't cheat" :roll:

To my knowledge there has been only one major case of wrong Ban and that was for MW2. But they unbanned them and gave them L4D2 for free :) adamosmaki

Yep. 2 copies, actually, if they didn't already own it. I have a screencap (not mine) of the e-mail that Gabe sent around explaining and apologizing for the mistake.

Was pretty cool of them, imo.

the only people that need fear banning are the people that deserve it

I am sure some people got banned because they unknowingly edited some files or something, and VAC misread that as cheating, but outside of that I dont see it happenign to people that do not deserve it.

VAC bans across engines. So if you get banned in MW2, your entire Quake 3 engine catalogue is screwed. Same applies for any Source game.

I kinda hope I do get wrongly banned, I could use a free game. :P