Field Guide · Anti-cheat

Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)

Valve Anti-Cheat is Valve's user-mode anti-cheat, in operation since 2002. VAC has no kernel driver and no always-on resident process; detection is server-side and via user-mode pattern checks during a match. Supplemented by VAC Live (statistical pattern detection), VAC Net (machine learning), and Trust Factor matchmaking.

user-modeRuns in normal user space. No kernel driver on your machine.

How it loads

No kernel driver

Firmware it asks for

None catalogued

Games catalogued

Catalogued as of

June 2026

What it can and cannot see

Valve Anti-Cheat has no kernel driver and no resident background process. It works from inside the game and from Valve's servers, comparing what a match looks like against patterns of known cheating. That means it sees far less of the host machine than a kernel anti-cheat does, by design, and trusts the user-mode boundary in exchange for asking almost nothing of your system.

The same boundary applies to every anti-cheat here. Anti-cheat that runs on your PC can examine what happens on that PC, to the depth its design allows. It cannot see a second computer, a capture device, or hardware placed between an input device and the port it plugs into. That is why the presence of an anti-cheat is not, on its own, proof of anything about a player, in either direction. Vera describes what runs; it does not decide what it means.

Games that use it

Counter-Strike 2

Valve Corporation·user-mode

Deadlock

Valve Corporation·user-mode

Dota 2

Valve Corporation·user-mode

Team Fortress 2

Valve Corporation·user-mode

Source

Catalogued by Vera from the anti-cheat maker's own documentation and named public reporting (Ars Technica, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, BleepingComputer, and others). Anti-cheats change; these notes reflect the public record as of June 2026. What is here is public evidence, never an accusation about a person.