not VAC banned as a requirement, "fair"?

It's actually possible for "offline scans" even without joining MP VAC-protected servers, I noticed such requests when developing ArchiBoT. They're handled by Steam process directly, hence they're being sent to steam client, and it's responsible for returning result.

It's funny because if I used e.g. ASF for running a VAC-protected game, then that part can't work properly (I don't have any VAC-request handling), and that's one of the reasons why ASF is 100% VAC secure, while idle master is not.

read what the talented archi posted up.

I listed variables that many people find valid for judging other members as unworthy of receiving consideration to receive a free game. I'm aware that VAC bans have nothing to do with SG, but I don't think that particular variable means anything by itself. By that logic, someone known to have knowingly and repeatedly violated a rule of another game giveaway site that has a rule that SG does not have would qualify as an insufficient reason for a giver here to use as a valid reason for exclusion.

And I wasn't addressing or responding to his hostility toward cheaters. I was addressing you alone because you said, "I could not care less if someone was banned from something mostly unrelated to SG," and, "It's a video game. It's not worth getting that worked up over."

Personally I don't care for generic thanks replies to giveaways, but I realize other people do and I don't deny others the option to exclude people for that not posting thanks (or for posting thanks), nor would I say, "it's just a giveaway. It's not worth getting that worked up over."

I'm saying it's all rather arbitrary. I don't see why VAC bans are somehow worse just because they aren't directly related to SG itself; to use the statement you used in response to me, don't insult yourself by pretending like you don't see how an individual with VAC bans on their account might come across to some as dishonest and disruptive to others' enjoyment of games.

P.S. Someone might read this post or any other post I have made, look at my avatar, my giveaway activity, my Steam profile, or anything, and say to themselves, "I don't like that guy. He's an ass. I'm going to blacklist him." I certainly wouldn't like that but it's their privilege to be arbitrary regarding such matters.

But you haven't actually made a case for why people who have played L4D2 for more than 2K hours should be prohibited.

Filtering people with a mark on their permanent record for cheating seems like just as good a reason as filtering people whom didn't RTFM upon joining SG and failed to activate a win or regifted.

It's the internet. Who needs logic when your wrong >:D
I'm indifferent, please don't hate me ;_;

View attached image.

Common people don't have to know that this certain graphic mod triggers VAC ban, because creator used this and not other file as base to make explosions blue instead of yellow. Sure, it will surface after lots of people get VAC banned and be noted somewhere, but what about people who used it as guinea pigs?

It's Valve fault that this mechanism is not working properly,and even if someone has got strong evidence that it's system fauls and not players for getting VAC banned people can't lift up these bans.

Something else is using haxes to shoot through walls in CS:GO and something else it simple graphic mod which will be flagged wrongly by VAC as cheat.

by your logic, if it is known to not go to a certain dangerous part of the city, and i as a stranger go there anyway and get killed, it's my fault. ^^

you can't expect people to always know everything. if you implement a system that marks you as a cheater for life, you better make sure there is absolutely no possibility for false positives. and if they occur anyway, you better make sure your support handles those cases correctly and lifts the ban if unjustified. Valve does neither of those things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG6fo34JOAk

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/valve-offers-free-game-after-12-000-false-bans

sure. i just meant that adjusted FOV as a means to see more on front of you is not really a valid justification to treat someone as cheater, if the players don't have the same FOV anyway, due to different resolutions and aspect ratios. for instance, let's assume CoD would support 21:9 (which i guess it doesn't, since CoD games are not the best PC ports, usually). so someone with such a monitor has a wider FOV anyway. then how would it be cheating if someone with a 16:9 monitor widens his FOV a little?

aside from that, we should generally allow people with motion sickness to alter the FOV (so they can play at all), regardless of the possibility that people may get a small advantage that way. we could just permit that for offline tournaments, for example, and not make such a big deal out of it for everyone else. :)

I think that you either are underestimating the people that in your words are too stupid and/or that you're overestimating your own opinion but neither negate the fact that between SGTools, puzzles, ITH, CV level 10 giveaways, forum nominating invite only and whitelists there's no basic difference because users that use and create any of these are most probably intentionally making these restrictive types of giveaways so that only certain users can enter and win these types of giveaways.

I heard and read many times on the forums that it's up to the giveaway creator how he does his giveaways. So a SGTools giveaway with a no VAC ban as requirement is nothing else or nothing different than all the other types of restrictive giveaways listed above.

I personally find that regifters, multiple winners, cheaters and scammers are just more of the same and I personally wouldn't like that these people win giveaways that I created. And I don't think I'm the only one that wouldn't like that because when looking at other users their SGTools giveaways the most used requirements are: all activated; no multiple wins and no VAC bans. I really do like SGTools giveaways a lot and will continue to use them when I want to and set the reqs like I want to and that coming from someone that has done 405 public giveaways and 73 group, WL and SGT giveaways. It isn't about the raw numbers It's just that I have really tried doing mostly public giveaways and have been disapointed with them as of late.

SGTools protected giveaways work as a gate and have loads of usefull functionality.

SGT giveaways give me far less support tickets, no more regifters, no more multiple winners, no more cheaters, no ratio's in the vicinity of 100/1 and 200/5, each wagon can now be checked in the train checker, SGT giveaways are very fast to check the winners comparing to other giveaways so I can expedite the winners gifts. And you can change or lower the requirements on the fly even when the giveaway is started.

I will still do some other types of giveaways but I'm thinking of transitioning the bulk of my giveaways to SGTools because I like them and I believe that these SGTools giveaways are part of the future of SG. Time will tell.

And off course I can't make things like SGTools and Archibot but then again who can? But that doesn't mean I can't work with SGTools as most of the stock/vanilla SGT requirements are self-explanatory and also SG users help each other, I helped users with SGTools and other users helped me with SGTools.

I thank Knsys for making SGTools, sharing it and making it even better. Also there's a lot of useful information to be found on the SGTools site.

Btw I grew up under the treat of the Soviets/USSR and I still aint seen thermonuclear ballistic missiles rain down on Germany and the rest of Europe. I would be more afraid that a religious nutter in Iran or a megalomaniac nutter in North Korea would use their terrorists/spooks to plant a dirty bomb in Europe or anywhere else.

Well, not sure if your definition of public shaming will be same as mine (might be even some language translation difference), so not sure if you'll consider this public shaming or not: in USA there are Sex Offenders List where you receive photos, names and address of people lawfully convicted of being sex offender. And all you need is a zipcode to receive full info.

But I agree with you about those politicians and media stuff. That's bullshit.

As for "What is the lesson here? Who cares if you get banned, with enough money you can create a new account and cheat again and again and again" - those guys are "crazies", stuff like public shaming in form of VAC-ban-info is something that's supposed to scare "normal people". And I guess after some time those bans could disappear from public view.
Some people would be sad if they would buy those accounts and learn about bans after paying, but then it's not like Steam TOS allows that...

Actually they didn't have to do anything, as soon as you would be vac banned your ban would be on a timer in your settings it would say something like "VAC banned: 1500 days remaining" as soon as the last day ended your vac would automatically be lifted with no work on valves side. They only got rid of it because they changed from VAC1 to VAC2.

+1

Tough but fair, people take this site way too seriously sometimes.

If you do "try to understand why people behave the way they do", then surely you realize that the conditions that precipitated the action—the agent's motive and intent, the material conditions of their existence, the context and circumstances of their action, etc.—can explain why someone might cheat? If so, then it doesn't make sense for you to view and judge cheaters so harshly and with such prejudice. If so, you wouldn't be treating cheaters as if their actions are reflections of their intrinsically malevolent natures, and you wouldn't be generalizing all cheaters in such an oversimplified manner.

I am not ignorant on reasons people do bad things, it's just that I don't think their reasons justify their actions in most cases.

Who said that the reasons for one's actions had to justify those actions? I'm not saying that any malefactor, whether it be a criminal or a wrongdoer of any sort, is justified in their actions by virtue of their underlying reasoning for those actions.

I indeed have no empathy for the unreasonable people, nor for people who only think about themselves and are wiling to hurt others in any way for their gain.

On what basis can you defensibly claim that all (or most) cheaters are as you described?

Cheaters mostly cheat because they get frustrated at seeing how other people are better and more skilled at games then they are. Some do it just to troll and ruin people's fun.

Do you have any empirical evidence verifying this? What is your basis for that claim?

None of those reasons can justify their actions.

It doesn't matter if they do. What matters are the conditions that precipitated the action and response to that action. Justification is important when determining the morality of the action, but that is not the issue I'm trying to address. The issue here is your response, in particular that your response to cheating is by generalizing all cheaters and aggressively discriminating against anyone you even suspect to be cheating.

Some people steal because they're in desperate need of what they're stealing, whether it's money or something else. That still doesn't justify stealing.

It depends on the context. What is being stolen? Why is it being stolen? What alternatives are there to theft that could achieve the same goal? You treat theft as if it is inherently immoral when property is just a social relation and theft is a violation of the social contract that informs it. Unless you believe that violating the social contract is itself inherently immoral, it doesn't make sense to treat theft as an unjustifiable action.

I come from a somewhat poor family and there were days when I'd have barely anything to eat. Things aren't that bad anymore, but my life is still pretty hard and I don't have many things that I want yet I have never even considered stealing or doing any kind of crime to improve my situation. I would rather suffer or even die then give up on my moral principles and my pride.

What moral principle(s) do you have that prohibits theft even when it is essential for your survival or the survival of others?

I usually don't generalize people, nor do I care about stereotypes. I don't generalize people based on their race or gender for example, but when it comes to criminals or cheaters then I do see them all as the same kind of people.

How is generalizing, stereotyping, and prejudging criminals and cheaters meaningfully different from doing the same toward any other demographic, whether it be race or sex or gender or political affiliation?

Now you may say for example that a father who steals so he could feed his children is not a bad person and I can somewhat agree with that. However he is also irresponsible and selfish because people shouldn't even consider having children until they sort their life out and are financial stable.

Again, you are ignoring the conditions that precipitated the action. Perhaps the father was previously married and gainfully employed, but his wife had died and as a result he fell into a deep depression. The family was unable to save up enough money to afford the burial, so the father had to take out a loan at a high interest rate that will cause him to remain in debt for years to come. Due to his waning performance at the job, primarily due to his depression and the recent events in his personal life, he was fired. The job was low-paying and the government aid office rejected his unemployment benefits application. As a result, he was unable to even afford enough for himself to eat, let alone the two children that his wife left behind. Tell me, how was that father irresponsible or selfish for having those children with his now-deceased wife?

So I wont have any empathy or tolerance for that person, albeit I will feel sorry for his children as they're his victims.

And the father isn't a victim, as well? You're essentially blaming the father for being poor and condemning him doing what he has to do to keep him and his children alive. For someone who allegedly grew up impoverished, you apparently have no sympathy for the very people who are in conditions as bad as (or worse than) yours was.

Unfair VAC bans are like I said very rare cases and people who get unfairly banned should contact Valve and have it sorted out.

Where is your evidence that unfair VAC bans are "very rare cases"? How can you explain the plethora of well-documented unfair bans and glaring flaws in the VAC system that could theoretically cause countless unfair bans? Contacting Valve about a VAC ban is pointless because, per Valve Support policy: All VAC bans are permanent - Valve has a zero-tolerance policy for cheating and will not lift VAC bans on request. Just like you do, Valve assumes that if someone gets a VAC ban, they deserved it and must have been a cheater, regardless of whether there is even evidence and regardless of whether the user's activities even constituted cheating. Just like you apparently believe, Valve considers users guilty until proven innocent.

There have only been a small number of exceptions, but the overwhelming evidence points to the VAC system being flawed and unreliable and the cause of countless false positive bans.

Considering how rare those cases are I think it's safe to assume that majority of people with VAC ban did indeed cheat. I would be more than willing to remove those who clean their name from my blacklist.

Except you have literally no evidence to prove that, and because of Valve's own policy, you will theoretically never remove someone from your blacklist because VAC bans are permanent and irreversible.

Sorry, I'm sure a lot of people on here have that same sentiment, but frankly I'm disappointed that I have to answer that.... To me it's all wrapped up in the word "gift" - you don't typically go out and buy a bunch of gifts and dump them in a bin somewhere and not care about where they go from there or who gets them. That would be more like a donation, and even then you still care where they go to some degree, you're just less directly connected. If nobody cared where their gifts went, they would just create level 0 public giveaways and be done with it.