Valve has handed a lifetime ban to one of the biggest Counter-Strike collectors, and the explanation sounds ridiculous. He is out more than €200,000 and he is never getting that money back. The company moved quickly once it discovered he was using ‘bots’.
One of Counter-Strike’s biggest skin collectors has watched his entire fortune vanish overnight. With an inventory valued above $200,000, Valve issued a permanent ban after the account was flagged for cheating. On its own, that is not especially remarkable, because it happens far more often than most people realize. The strange part is that the methods he used were not designed to play better or win more matches. He was focused on obtaining a single item that is rare, yet functionally pointless and has no commercial value.
The Most Expensive Medal in Counter-Strike History
The story centers on Zach, a Chinese collector, and the most plausible theory points to the use of ‘bots’. While Valve has not offered official confirmation, there are multiple clear signs suggesting that is what happened. For example, across his claimed 13,000 hours between Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Counter-Strike 2, he racked up more than 770,000 knife kills and a perfect 100% accuracy rate with the Desert Eagle. Those figures are completely implausible, and they come alongside an extreme amount of time spent in the game. It is not impossible, but it is highly unlikely, especially considering he also logs heavy playtime across several different games.
As for the item he was trying to obtain – the most controversial element here – it was the rarest version of the annual service medal. Counter-Strike 2 includes a sort of prestige system. There are 40 levels, and once you finish them you reset, earning a badge that is stored permanently in your inventory. That badge changes every year and appears in six different colors. The red one, which Zach was aiming for, is the rarest and only drops after completing that prestige cycle six times. Achieving it takes roughly nine hours of play per day on average and, with very few exceptions, it is almost always done by cheating.
The problem is that the medal is only useful for showing off, while the player’s inventory contained 33,752 items. Among them was a set of 20 ‘fade’ knives, one for each model, along with several M4A4 Howl skins, among the most exclusive cosmetics in the game. The collection also included multiple ‘dragon lore’, ‘medusa’, and ‘desert hydra’ skins. Now, however, none of it can be used on official servers. They have effectively become a handful of images you can scroll through in the collection tab. Since they cannot be traded, converting the stash back into real money is also impossible.
The banned user has not commented on the situation, but he has continued using his Steam account normally and has been playing other games. His profile, however, has been flooded with insults. It is worth remembering that, while his actions were wrong, Counter-Strike 2 is not facing a cheating crisis because of players like this.
Forrás: 3djuegos
