Valve has announced that developers are now able to personally ban players that are "disruptive."
According to the , Valve now allows developers to "implement their own systems that detect and permanently ban any disruptive players, such as those using cheats."
The game developer will notify Valve when such a player has been detected in their game, and Valve will apply the game ban to that account.
Steam is a massive platform, so it makes sense that Valve might outsource cheat detection to individual developers. It means that devs can issue a ban on players in a specific game, even if that game isn't enforced with Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system.
However, is there potential for specific developers to get too eager with the banhammer? What if a player is banned for something that isn't technically cheating - such as leaving a poor game review? What do you think the implications of developer-issued bans are? Let us know in the comments.
Valve's anti-cheat detection system has seen from the game. In other Steam news, Valve last week implemented a that was with the explanation that Valve "didn't understand exactly what we were doing."