Valve updates RMR eligibility rules regarding VAC bans

The game developer has finally decided to review its policy regarding cheating cases.

Valve has announced that it has updated the guidelines for its events regarding the eligibility of players who have received VAC bans in CS:GO.

Moving forward, players who have been VAC banned will be allowed to compete at Valve-sponsored events if at least five years have passed since the ban came into effect. However, players who have received VAC bans after participating in a Valve-sponsored event, including qualifiers, will remain ineligible.

"Up until today, players were ineligible to participate in Valve-sponsored events if they had ever received a VAC-ban in CS:GO," Valve said. "These guidelines had not seen an update since the game was new and all CS:GO VAC bans were relatively recent. But VAC bans can now be more than 8 years old. So we’ve decided to update them."

The news comes as a major boost for players who have VAC bans dating back to the early days of CS:GO and have seen their careers hampered by what until now was a lifelong ban from Valve events. The most notorious example is Vinicius "⁠vsm⁠" Moreira, whose VAC ban dates back to 2013, when he was only 13 years old. Elias "⁠Jamppi⁠" Olkkonen recently left ENCE and decided to pursue a career in VALORANT after being unsuccessful in his attempts to overturn his ban, which also cost him a transfer to OG in 2019.

Valve noted that there are no plans to review the cases of players who are ineligible to participate in its events for other reasons (for example, match-fixing). "These remain unchanged," Valve added.