Counter-Strike 2 is banning players for moving their mouse too fast

Just days after Valve started reversing bans for those who used AMD's Anti-Lag+ feature in Counter-Strike 2, players have discovered a reproducible method for triggering a VAC ban on your account: moving your mouse very, very fast.

As shared by YouTuber Water CS2 and others (and spotted by PCGamesN), several players have incurred the wrath of VAC by increasing their mouse DPI to 10,000+ (around 9,200 DPI higher than most people actually play at) and going wild with their camera. In the examples circulating online, all the player does is swing their camera around while shooting during the warmup phase. A few have managed to trigger a ban in just a single match, while this guy had to play for over an hour before VAC stepped in.

Clearly Valve's new VAC Live system—an evolved version of its anti-cheat capable of banning players during live matches—still needs some tweaks, but I can see why it's making the snap judgments that these high-DPI players are bots. Whenever I see a teammate beyblade around in circles before a round starts, part of me wonders if they're about to turn on their hacks and instantly snap to the heads of every enemy on the map, or shoot wildly in every direction to avoid being kicked for inactivity. Unfortunately VAC is flying right past the hackusation stage and going straight to bans.

The good news is this VAC bug is easily avoidable once you know about it. Nobody actually plays CS2 at 10,000+ DPI unless they're goofing around, and I don't suggest poking the bear by trying this yourself unless you're on a burner account. But now would be the perfect time to warn your friend who begins every match warmup by doing stationary donuts at Mach 1 that VAC is on the prowl.

Valve has yet to comment on these bogus bans, but considering the studio was fairly quick to issue unbans for the whole Anti-Lag mishap, expect a fix soon.

CS2 Reproduceable High DPI VAC Ban Bug from r/GlobalOffensive

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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.