Valve has announced that game developers can now implement bans on Steam accounts. This is a big deal because enforcing bans was previously a process that Valve did itself, through the Valve Anti-Cheat System.

When a developer finds out a player is cheating, they will notify Valve, which will then issue a game ban on the offending player's Steam account. Game bans will be visible in the player's Steam profile, listing the game they were caught cheating in, like a badge (or many badges) of shame. Valve issued a community post regarding the change, confirming that, well, no one likes cheaters.

Because nobody likes playing with cheaters.

Playing games should be fun. In order to ensure the best possible online multiplayer experience, Valve allows developers to implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats.

Game developers inform Valve when a disruptive player has been detected in their game, and Valve applies the game ban to the account. The game developer is solely responsible for the decision to apply a game ban. Valve only enforces the game ban as instructed by the game developer.

For more information about a game ban in a specific game, please contact the developer of that game.

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/26758-steam-bans-can-now-be-issued-by-game-developers-will-be-displayed-on-player-profiles/

bad, i trust Valve a lot more than most game devs...

Hm... I'm neutral on this right now... We'll have to see how it pans out.

On one hand, it could help lighten Valve's workload and allow for faster moderation on a per-game basis.

On the other, developers may get too happy to hand out lots of bans for people they just don't like (Especially oversensitive indie devs).

Vavle have been making a few odd choices as of late. Not really sure how I feel about this...but if it helps cut out cheaters then it's not too bad.

Unless players can rebuy the games they were banned from (to get unbanned), I'm not OK with this. One's Steam account could be worth a lot, and giving individual developers the power to ruin the reputation of said Steam account is not acceptable unless players can do something against it. That is, I don't exactly trust individual developers with their possibly hand-picked bans. In too many cases where bans are issued manually by servers admins and such, have I seen innocent players get banned just because the admin deemed the player too good to be playing without cheats.

Also, I don't agree with the bans showing on one's profile. Hand-picked bans shouldn't be able to do that, only bans issued by some automatic system. Like I said, too much room for abuse otherwise.

Ugh, this sounds like this could be a bad idea. I feel this could be something devs could abuse, especially if steam green light games can do that too, for say like negative comments on their game...

Edit: Only applies to online multiplayer and item trading.

Not a fan, and I think this begins a very slippery slope scenario. Will start shifting away from steam purchases now. I support a method of dealing w/ trolls/idiots in multiplayer, however, I do not support this.

As long as game devs don't abuse this ability, I think it could work out.

This seems to be Valve's motif the past 4-5 years where they went from making games to being the middleman to now just wanting to hand control to people and pubs/devs and so far it's gone down hill quite a bit, I expect some form of backlash on this like what happened with charging for mods.

As much as I like having most of my games in one place and Steam sales, Valve is certainly not as much of a saint as they used to be.

I'll remain neutral on this for now until the first stone is improperly cast by some known pub/dev, only then will it prove whether the system works or not, we need more people keeping an eye out for cheaters anyway and banning them is a sure way of sending the message, after all when you sign up for Steam you sign their EULA in order to be able to buy and play games on their market/client.