Recently while playing Counter-Strike: Source I realized something. I have been playing CS since 2004, back when it was just version 1.6. However, I can not prove this because of the iron fist of valve/steam. Hacking in CS 1.6 and CSS, or any game for that matter is a waste of time, but when I first began playing back in 2004 I was still pretty young, only a freshmen in high school, and I hacked. When I first began hacking in CS it was just for fun, for entertainment, I did not really know if it was all that wrong or not, for this was my first ever FPS.
Shortly after I began hacking in CS: 1.6, I was banned, about three months later. My account was “VerisCode”, if I tried to log into it today I would see the message shown below. For awhile after that I shared an account with my friend, and soon after Counter-Strike: Source was released and I made a new account, and bought the valve complete package on it for the usual fee of $99.99. This new account was called “Nierz”, a name I also used for awhile in other graphic design communities online. Now I began to get really into CSS, not just for fun but competitively. Myself, and a friend from school went through many clans together, often times creating our own. At one point we even owned our own 64 man server, as well as several 20 man servers and some Ventrilo servers. Some of our old teams consisted of [DD] (Destination Death), [zG] Zero Gravity, Delta (the symbol was a weird D with a slash through it which I can not seem to find now), e! (Team eXcite), [FURY] (Team Fury), aTx` (Atroxity), IaD (Infiltrate and Destroy).
Although, in some of my previous teams, such as Fury and Infiltrate and Destory, we played in CAL-Open and some other minor leagues. We would get a PUG from mIRC to practice and it was so obvious that so many people were hacking; we would play teams that would blatantly hack. So we did the only thing we thought was right at the time, we hacked back, and proceeded to do so in CAL. In fact, the hacking was so bad that we could barely even win while hacking, because nearly every team was hacking at the time in CAL-Open. Eventually, my Nierz account also got banned by VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat). This was all during the year 2005, after that I stopped playing CSS for awhile, and picked up WoW in early 2006 and played that until early 2007. However, the Blizzard staff is not nearly as strict as the Valve staff. I got away with so many things while playing WoW without even a warning. First off, I bought so much gold in WoW that it is ridiculous, I used glitches and exploits in battlegrounds, went into unfinished areas such as Hyjal, Under Ironforge, Caverns of Time, and even modified the world to suit my needs.
Back in the old days of WoW you used to be able to modify the world slightly, in the plague lands there are numerous broken down towers that have no ladder to get to the top. However, by modifying the world, very similar to adding a skin in CSS, I replaced the old broken down tower with a fully working and normal tower, so to me I could just climb to the top and attack people that wondered by (I was a shadow priest on a PvP server – The Forgotten Coast), However, to people that looked at me, I was floating at the top of a broken down tower, and no one could get near me. I did all of this in WoW and never received any kind of punishment, they were getting their $15 a month, so they were happy.
However, with Valve, any kind of infraction and you are finished, banned instantly. During the summer of 2008 I was wondering how I could redeem my status on Steam that I once had, having a low Steam ID, because my 8 Digit on my newest “Dvsclarity” account just was not working for me. So I purchased an account on eBay, it was a six digit account made in 2003. I purchased the Valve Complete package on it, and one day went to log in and it said the account was locked, they said it was flagged because of “to many purchases” – seriously? They wanted proof that the account was mine now, and wanted the serial key for the copy of CSS that was already on the account when I purchased it; I could not produce the key so they disabled that account as well, including my new “Dvsclarity” account. They love locking accounts; they will disable every account you have for no apparent reason. I actually did have the CD key for my “Dvsclarity” account so I had to take a picture of it and send it to Steam Support, and they reluctantly unlocked it, but warned me that any more shenanigans and this account would be disabled as well.
So I got my account back, and also made another account, my “j4z” account, for some other games. You must be wondering, wow – all of these accounts, and all of this money wasted. Yes, I have bought the Valve Complete Package three times now, and guess what, this is exactly how Steam/Valve makes their money. Now, as I began, I was playing CSS the other day and realized something, Valve wants hackers. I have been playing some Dust2 lately, and noticed that there are still lots of hackers, in fact, I could not go into a 24/7 Dust2 server without at least a few people with a 100/1 kill-death ratio. And the “voteban” feature was in regular use on most of these servers.
I thought to myself… I have been here; I used to hack back in the day. It is extremely stupid as I have already stated, but I did not know better back then, I am an adult now and see why it is such a waste of time. I always imagined though, that they would eventually bring an end to hacking in general, however, while playing I noticed hackers are just as prolific, if not even more numerous than they were back in 2004! “They still have not figured out this hacker problem”, I said. But it is not a problem to them; it is how they make their money. It is also why the steam support staffs will ban/disable your account without a second thought, because they know the majority of people will just rebuy their games.
Could valve reduce or even eliminate the amount of hackers? Most likely yes they could. Do they want to? No they do not. I would even go as far as saying that Valve/Steam supports and even distributes hacks behind doors, just so players will find them, use them, get banned, and rebuy their games. Notice Counter-Strike: Source is still the number four seller on the “top sellers” list on Steams website, because people continue to get banned and rebuy CSS. Will I ever try to play CSS competitively again? No I will not, not when the company running the games supports hacking.
Posted by Joshua 
