Valve has confirmed on Reddit that it’s wielding a mighty ban hammer in Counter-Strike 2, targeting farming bots. This latest wave of bans terminated 960,000 accounts, which were all picked up by VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat), thanks to data combining behaviour detection and user reports.
Unlike most other games, Counter-Strike 2 has skins and items that hold significant value and can be exchanged for real-world currency. To give you an idea, the current market value of all CS2 skins is above $8 billion, although, back in October 2025, it was valued at $4.1 billion following a crash. As a result, many players do whatever is needed to “farm’ them, in the hope of scoring/dropping a valuable item they can sell for real cash. One of the common and easiest methods is to use automated bots, which control an in-game character while the real player is away from their keyboard (AFK).
Understandably, Valve isn’t happy with these kinds of behaviours. Firstly, because they impact the value of the items, which can be sold via the Steam marketplace, where Valve takes a cut. Secondly, it has a major impact on the legitimate user experience, and Valve doesn’t want to see fully inactive (AFK) lobbies.
The 960,000 figure, which was revealed by official Valve Reddit user ido_valve, in a quote that’s posted below, shows just how rampant this situation has become. What’s more, that figure excludes those who slipped through the cracks (didn’t get banned) by using less aggressive farming methods. There are still multiple reports of players claiming they’re encountering bots, despite the massive ban.
Yesterday we banned 960,000 farming bot accounts.
This was the result of a bunch of investigation that benefited from user reports. Thank you.
To send us reports of bots, email csgoteamfeedback@valvesoftware.com, subject “Farming Bot Report”
Note that this ban doesn’t only concern purpose-built botting accounts; a good portion of the banned accounts (about 40,000 according to csstats) included those who play competitive and premier games. This indicates that serious players also dabble in skin farming, at least from time to time.
While this wave of bans should improve matchmaking quality and reduce junk accounts in lobbies, it won’t affect cheating, since Valve specifically targeted the bot-farming ecosystem. Furthermore, many of these accounts, if not the majority, are used as burner accounts that transfer or sell their gained items as soon as possible, meaning the people behind them can just make new ones to replace the banned ones.
At least they won’t be able to reuse the banned ones in other Valve titles, since a VAC ban equals an automatic ban from multiplayer games, such as Team Fortress 2 and other Counter-Strike titles. All items still present on these accounts are likely to be blocked forever, as a VAC ban is often final.
Since this is the biggest VAC ban wave ever, with the second one being 600,000, some users one the associated Reddit thread have started wondering if Valve is cleaning its game before a major update to the CS2 Armory. Some of these users argue that bots were stockpiling stars and items ahead of an update, so banning them would hypothetically affect the supply and prices after the Armory changes.
Regardless of the reason, fewer bots means fewer items supplied in the foreseeable future, which could drive up prices. But at the end of the day, those who only play the game for its gameplay won’t need to be worried about these prices.
