CSGO banned more than 10,000 hackers and boosters in the latest purge

Data from ConVars shows that CSGO just had a purge, banning more than 10,000 accounts between June 4 and 6.

This purge targets booster accounts as well as hackers in CSGO. 10,505 orders were issued over three days and about 800 VAC boards appeared. This is the biggest CSGO purge in 2021.

The spike in the number of banned accounts came after the unranked matchmaking and Prime updates on June 3. The new update adds the ability to add tools to detect players abusing matchmaking errors in CSGO. Valve is currently working on the post-update boosters related to ranked matchmaking.

Boosters in CSGO are people who share CSGO accounts for others to play for, usually better people to improve their rankings. High rank accounts are often sold to players who are not good, but want to experience the feeling of playing at high rank. Sometimes, low rank accounts are also sold to good players, or smurfs. Smurf is a term that refers to good players using sub-accounts against new players and this violates Valve’s usage controls.

How does Valve catch boosters in CSGO?

Valve seems to have added a new algorithm to detect hackers and boosters in the new update. If Valve discloses the method, hackers may be able to get around it. Sometimes bans come from community reports – they can be submitted directly through Steam or in CSGO.

A popular method to boost CSGO accounts is to queue up a 5-player game on the Vertigo map. This is the least-played map in active duty in many regions. This will place teams that intentionally boost each other. Two boosters can boost 10 accounts at the same time using this method. Valve most likely used algorithms, plus a team of self-investigation to find boosters.

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