Valve out for blood? Several potential cheaters handed global cooldown in Counter Strike

Since the last few days, several players in Counter Strike 2 have met with a global cooldown, both during the match or in lobby while searching for one. This cooldown is believed to be handed to potential cheater who are under suspicion of using restricted applications.

A massive ban wave is happening in CS2 right now and them getting banned live is the funniest shit I've seen lately. pic.twitter.com/ONFssUII3O

— Aquarius 🛹 (@aquaismissing) April 30, 2024

Counter Strike has been suffering a severe cheating issue since the Global Offensive days, and the release of CS2 did nothing to stop it. Now, Valve recently shipped out a major update adding new features like switching hand, BOB and the Overwatch system.

Overwatch is a system where a trusted partner watches the demo of the reported player and concludes if they are cheating. If the verdicts from multiple Overwatch cases are the same, a ban is issued. The current accounts on cooldown are also suspected to be undergoing a review, which will then decide their fate.

Multiple ban shocks community

While there may still be cheaters who are left out, the number of cooldown handed, let along during a live game, have impressed the community. This much hype was only there when VAC Live was first discovered during the beta before going radio silent.

In a post on X by popular CS2 content creator and reporter Gabe Follower also reported the instance, however, the tweet refrained from calling them an Overwatch ban. In a follow-up to the same post, Gabe Follower wrote, “It's not overwatch ban, and these bans are hidden, it's impossible to track them through Steam API.”

Unexpected news appeared today. Cheaters are getting banned on hungreeds accounts in a row. It's not overwatch, it's server-side detection. I have a footages on which 9/10 players get banned within few seconds in the same match. I'm currently verifying all info and doing a video. pic.twitter.com/WJzpansfga

— ‎Gabe Follower (@gabefollower) April 30, 2024

This further leaves the players in the dark. It is quite clear that the bans are being handed to potential cheaters. The question remains how, and what will happen to these accounts?

With the current cheating issues in CS, it is high time that Valve acted on it. Maybe, these bans are a fluke, or it could be a start of something big in the works by Valve.