not VAC banned as a requirement, "fair"?

Since there are proven cases of VAC bans issued without any multiplayer cheat involved, I don't use that criteria myself - even if I wouldn't mind blacklisting a proven multiplayer cheater.
But if a GA maker wants to use it, it's totally up to her/him: people make GA because they want to, nobody is entitled to enter GAs as if it was a basic human right.

I never included the VAC ban rule to my SG Tools GAs and I never will do, not cause there is the possibility to get a VAC ban for stuff like mods, but because it has nothing to do with your SG activity.
Stuff like the ratio, multiple wins or not activated gifts all reflect your behavior on SG but a VAC ban just shows if you had cheated sometime in a game. And yeah I don't like cheater, but it's not my business to judge about someone for stuff that is not SG releated. What's next, an no Apple user rule if you hate Apple? Or a no banker rule cause most of them are just capitalistic assholes who would sell their own grandmother? (At least the first one might be possible to implement :3)

All requirements, which are important to those, who are gifting are fair - it is their right. But IMHO any restrictions are miserable and pathetic - everyone should have equal chances. Just let the Universe to decide, instead of stupid "restrictions" ))

i think that is still "fair" to use it.....always someone can argue, thah he is innocent and some rule is not fair against him, but this is how life goes.....life is not fair
btw i would never use a mod to VAC protected game and one more thing......everyone with VAC ban in history have already ticket to hell :D

Until there will be some changes to the system since the video explains that you can get a vac ban from a simple innocent dll at vac protected games its logical to me that everyone should avoid any kind of mods in those games unless a game has a workshop and you can get an add on that is steam approved. On the other hand i do believe maybe someone cheated as a kid or teenager but he did mature over the years so maybe after some time like 2-4 years they should be able to create a ticket to get them removed or the system automatically removes them since they havent ever cheated again or will some accounts could worth a lot of money to rebuy all the games

This thread has brightened my day. I was expecting much worse responses and - while there's still a few people with a lot to learn - it's nice to see that most people here have some understanding of the flaws of VAC and realise that there's more to VAC bans/cheating in general than the typical competitive aimbot/wallhack types who give the rest a bad name.

I don't think there's much that can be done about this though, apart from continuing to educate people about the bigger picture, or blacklisting the ones who can't be reasoned with.

pero mira como esta el bardo, papu... me quedo leyendo todo en ingles... sobre el vac ban es un requisito quien un hijo de puta quiera chitear a otro juego así que no se lo merece.

The thing with all wins activated for example,now burns my soul. I have won a gift(Killing Floor),and the creator of the giveaway gave me a duplicate key.He asked me to be nice to him and accept other games(fish fillets 2 on steam and dead space 2 on uplay) as an apologize,and because i wanted to be kind I checked the received button.I got Banned for 30 days because of this,and now i can't use any of the sgtools.
It's my fault i know i should have read the rules,but things happen..

I'm glad this got posted. It's convinced me to not use VAC bans in future SG Tools GA's. The other filters are more than enough.

i agree with what other people said, valve should kick you from the game and give you a warning, BEFORE giving you the ultimate. this will scare people straight and the will fix w,e they are doing

I believe this really is a non-issue. The amount of VAC bans that are in error are grossly small. The fact the entire population of Steam Gifts is just a small sliver of Steam users, would mean that the number of SG users that have a VAC ban in error even a smaller subset. Then given the massive number of giveaways on SG only a few use SGtools; but that is growing. Of those that use the tools most don't have VAC ban as a hurdle to enter. So we are talking about the smallest of subset of people trying to enter a very small amount of giveaways. To make this even smaller; the person would have to know about the giveaway, want to be in the giveaway, and met all the other requirements be that ratio, CV level, activation, whitelist, and/or group. Before this issue even matters.

Is there a problem? Maybe but even then you have to understand that it is so small and effects so few members that it really doesn't warrant the time or resources to solve.

...scanning...
Luchingador has now been VAC-banned for this thread.

But on a serious note: I believe a less binary approach would be the best of both worlds with regards to sgtools 'rules'.

VACs for life are not fair, specially because Valve doesn't investigate and shows no appreciation. At least there should be details about the VAC and it there should be a limit life spawn of 1 year for example. If the user gets another VAC, it should increase to 3 years and so on.

In addition If you pay for the game you own it and there should be no DRM as well as processes in your computer inspecting what mods you are using. Offline mode you must be able to do what you want. I remember as a kid playing a lot with mods for the games I owned because I didn't have money to buy new ones. This for me ruins the experience when purchasing games.
So limiting people not to use mods, even offline is just not right. Online gaming however should be treated differently, still with caution though. Users should be thrown out of the game or even banned for that game while still allowing for a proper investigation to be made.

After reading the thread I realised VAC bans can happen to anyone and although I am not a frequent mod user I don't want to be afraid of using them if that is my will. The VAC system should be carefully thought and it is more important not to ban innocent people than to ban cheaters (because there are other ways to deal with them).

To finalise, this is also one of the reasons I will always prefer GOG over Steam. As my library increases, the less freedom I have. Balance, competition is very important to stop monopolies like what Valve has now.

cheaters ruin every online game, so in all honesty I don't think it's unfair to block them... seeing as they make it unfair for people to play online games when they are in them..

Nothing worse than a cheater in an online game, I don't even know how many online only games I've played where some flying in the air, infinite health, scammer cheesy hacker ruined the experience.

I will tell you one thing, I've seen thousands of Steam profiles and not even once I've seen a good looking profile being VAC banned. All VAC banned I've seen were on very fishy profiles, mostly people with 1-20 games who spent like 500+ hours in CS:GO.

So yeah, nothing wrong with that imo.

I don't use SGTools. I don't use VAC bans as a gate in my giveaways. I uphold other people's right to use it as such if they wish.

What is "fair" on a free to enter giveaway?

What is fair, is that the creator of the giveaway, those supplying the game, are free to stipulate (within the rules of the site) the conditions of entry.

I hate cheaters, I hope every single one of them dies. Anyone with a VAC ban, no matter the reason, should be banned from everywhere.

This is an interesting point. I did not know DLL hooks could trigger a VAC ban in single-player games.

I fail to see what makes it unfair
its just another way to reduce/limit the entrants on your GA, for all i care i could use SGtools as not to allow high level users from entering.
in addition these are such a tiny little portion compared to the amount of public giveaways
Blacklists are more unfair then this, Vac bans almost guarantee a cheater.
While Reasons to blacklist are whatever you wish them to be and affect every giveaway you make

If you think the way people use is unfair, thats fine, its your opinion
Saying as a requirement, it's not fair, thats not true as it clearly serves a purpose beyond ostracizing people for their past behavior, that reason being not allowing them to enter certain game to which they wouldn't be able to play

This is a rather interesting topic, reading the posts I could almost draw a parallel with the olde Blackstone's formulation:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

We don't have personal freedom at stake in our case, though. In the end, it's a requirement like another, set up by the giveaway creator for a private giveaway.

VAC may have flaws but i doubt it detects something that shouldn't be detected, i believe it's done in a way to only really ban if a cheat or hack or modification is 100% confirmed, if for whatever reason a ban is unjustified, it gets sooner or later automatically revoked.

VAC is a good requirement, if you give away something that offers competitive play of any sort.

Cheater kids shouldn't be in giveaways :p

Just cause minority of people got VaC banned for no reason whatsoever , doesnt change the fact that it does catch a lot of legit cheaters aswell .
I know it suck for the people who ware banned unjustifiedly , but still ... if i ever created a SGTools gib , i would definitelly include the VaC ban option .