Valve unbans hundreds of CS2 accounts despite players begging for crackdown on cheating

There’s no question that CS2 players’ biggest gripe with the game so far has been Valve’s inability to properly deal with cheaters. For its part, Valve took decisive action on the matter by unbanning hundreds of accounts within the last few hours. Not exactly what complaining players had in mind.

To be fair to the developer, the latest wave of unbans is not only justified, but way overdue. These account recoveries can be traced back a few months when players first started noting they were getting banned from CS2 for the cardinal sin of playing with high DPI.

There’s a little more to the story than that, as most players who shared exactly how they got banned admitted they were intentionally going for obscenely high DPI, so they could spin around as fast as possible and appear like they were aimbotting. It’s easy enough to dismiss these bans as trolls getting what they deserve, but trolling still isn’t a bannable offense in CS2, so whether we all approve of the fake aimbots or not, it’s clear their deeds did not warrant the punishment received.

That’s what Valve has concluded anyway, as players affected by the initial ban wave are now reporting their time away from CS2 is finally over. For some, the ban period approached three full months, enough time to push most people away for good, but the Counter-Strike grind is hard to give up, and most players are declaring their immediate return to the game they love. Coincidentally, Brazilian soccer star Gabriel Jesus announced his own CS2 account got unbanned just as the initial wave of DPI ban reversals started taking off. It’s not very likely it has anything to do with the DPI shenanigans, however, as Jesus was only banned about a week prior and his issue did not appear to have anything to do with DPI.

On the one hand, reversing what are generally considered to be false bans is always a positive change. No one wants innocent players to take the fall, even if they get a little bit too trolly. On the other hand, this is another bad look for Valve in regards to CS2 cheaters. It’s hard to take the developer’s efforts against cheating seriously when it takes several months to unban non-cheaters who were just playing around. If Valve’s anti-cheat system can be fooled so easily by a DPI increase and some manual spinning, it’s hard to believe it can effectively detect actual cheaters.