This might be something of interest, Valve was recently caught banning accounts on Steam from their Source-based games through GNU/Linux usernames and hostnames (not Steam usernames). This began an uproar on GitHub (https://archive.is/h1wVs), where a Valve employee accidentally confirmed this to a group of cheaters who originally found the horrid and very broken method of detection.

Knowing that details about VAC should be never publicly disclosed, the damage has been done, and many news websites began to report about it (PCGamer and Polygon did a laughable bad job talking about the group of cheaters who found out the issue, as expected). Soon after, another Valve employee (that currently works with the VAC team) dismissed the company's previous words (https://archive.is/DbudG) and the ban mechanic soon vanished, two days after it has been reported.

Currently, it has been found out new VAC modules that were reporting to Valve sensible user information, such as GNU/Linux usernames, user IDs, group IDs, user working directory and shell, hostname (nodename), system name, versions of kernel and release (solid proof is present at this decompiler dump: https://archive.is/zWs22). Other than this issue, the general public now refuses to believe such thing is happening, thanks to the previous Valve employee calling it a "tactic employed by cheaters to try and sow discord and distrust among anticheat systems".

Quick tl;dr: Valve deploys a new and very false-positive mechanic for cheat detection, admits doing such, and later refuses that anything has ever happened. Later on, new VAC modules were caught snooping through system and user information without being previously disclosed, and is ignored because of general public believing on a Valve employee's words through (((Reddit))).

Is there anyway to spread even more the word about this whole happening?

>>14090946

>(1)

>defending Steam, at all

>>14090971

The truth might come from the ugliest places, you need to remember why this imageboard exists in the first place.

>>14090963

This is what stops people from believing: nobody else dares to deeply investigate what else Steam could do with your personal info outside the program itself. Other than /tech/'s security issues list, there's not a large amount of sources that you can consider trustworthy. Who to trust then? A multi-billionaire company that already has a dirty record with their anti-cheat, or a group of hackers and decompilers that believes on the user's privacy?

>>14091043

Where did I ever describe that those bots are any good? Or did you suddenly just migrate from Reddit and catch my post? I am trying to focus specifically on the privacy issue, that now has actual solid evidence on collecting system and user information only from GNU/Linux players. At the same moment, you're ignoring a very serious point over a psychological behavior in a video game (feelings over facts). If you actually doubt me, I've previously assisted many players attempting to run TF2V standalone on GNU/Linux.

>>14091128

None, I never affirmed that innocent people were banned from it. I only talked about it since it was the main factor of distrust about the findings of the module dump. Try harder next time, Newell

>>14091150

The PCGamer article debunks nothing and does not talk about what information Valve obtains externally from your computer. Their article was update to include Valve's newest statement about the situation and repeats what the employee said with other words. Pretty much the same situation with Polygon, a website that you seem to like very much. Back to the oven you go.

>>14091171

updated*

>>14091179

If you really cared about TF2, you should have been in here before:

>>14024720

Team Fortress 2 as its current state is dead and as cancerous as the rest of Valve. If you're still part of Live TF2, again, consider returning to 4chan or Reddit.

>>14091192

Read again my initial post and please see the attached picture. If you're here just to shill for another multi-billionaire company without arguments, just give up. nice (You)s :^)

>>14091226

I'm not the one who wasted $300 on virtual items, such as you.