Within a week of Counter-Strike 2's biggest update yet, players were finding their creative ways to farm XP for their Armory-Passes. After stopping some of these methods, Valve has now banned many exploiters.
A week ago, Valve rolled out CS2's biggest update yet. It led to a lot of players using some of the worst XP-farming methods we've seen so far in CS2 for rewards. Valve have now punished those who were caught using these methods.
What kind of bans did Valve hand out?
They handed out one-year trade-bans to players using such exploits. They can still play the game, even buy in game stuff and open cases.
But they will not be able to either trade their items or acquire other items.
Many of the victims are understandably mad at Valve for this reaction:
>Valve let an exploit in the game because they don't give a shit about they're game >People exploit it >Valve ban people for a mistake they made >
— Babou (@b9bou) October 9, 2024
Others were confused, as to why no VAC-/permanent-bans were handed out:
Many big content creators were part of this XP exploit, so they went with a year trade ban. Otherwise, people using this method to farm medals were given VAC Ban. Hmmm...
— Thour CS2 (@ThourCS2) October 9, 2024
xMercy then summed it up perfectly on Twitter/X:
Apparently, people that bug abused the CS2 Armory XP farming glitch, are receiving some harsh trading cooldowns.I mean, it was kinda expected that it wouldn't end well... they did ban people for bug abusing other exploits in the past.So, unfortunately, this is a message, a...
— xMercy (@xMercy_CS) October 9, 2024
It is in Valve's best interest to be strict within this topic. They should set a precedent like this, not to tolerate exploiting in general. And they did.
Furthermore, the fact, that they did not mess around, i.e. letting content creators off the hook for instance, shows they mean business.
1 Year Ban pic.twitter.com/3bEhPH5Y98
— Arrow (@ArowCS) October 9, 2024
Arrow, for example, a big CS content creator from the US, is among those who got banned.
An encouraging sign for the part of the community, that truly cares about playing the game the right way.
Do you think this is too harsh from Valve's side? Or is this a fair punishment for everyone that exploited the game this way?