CS:GO. wait what?

[OzDragon]

Ok I was in my competitive groove a few days ago... but playing with randoms as none of my friends were on at the time. Made a few new friends and added them to my friends list. Fast forward a few days and POP I get a big old smack in the face from the Valve Corporation with a side order of smack down. I see this when I log into CS:GO:

Simply WTF!

Ok I have no idea who this was that I partied with, but I got hit with this bitch slap and lost approx. 15 wins -- and they took 1 and 1/2 level of my rank. For playing with randoms... wow valve and steam really need to fix this.

Now I am pleased to see them taking this action as someone willfully benefiting from hacking should be slapped down, but when you don't even know someone is hacking? There needs to be some kind of appeal system in place were you should be able to prove you just met "said person" recently and give people like me a chance to speak up.

So All CS:GO players out there: be aware of who you are partying with!

[Dani Oliver]

I agree that the spirit behind what they're doing is on track... but if you're unwittingly playing with a hacker it can be kind of disconcerting to lose progress that you, regardless of the hacker's intentions, worked hard for. This is lost time and effort.

I also agree that a better framework needs to be put in place to identify and deal with this. For example:

1. What motivation do they give you to go back out there to try and retrieve your lost time and effort if you don't know if the next random party you get in isn't hosting another hacker?

2. How do you know that this same hacker isn't just going to buy another account and do the same thing under a different name?

3. If there is an appeal system out there, it's rather obscure.

From what I've seen so far in my basic research, people say that they're being shrugged off and told that this is an automated system and that there's nothing they (valve/steam) can do about it.

It'd be nice to think that they'll catch all the hackers and this will be a thing of the past, but the posts I've been reading over suggest that this has been going on for at least 6 years. Geesh.

[Lego]

The question that pops into my mind is: does the penalty fit the time spent with the hacker, even unknowingly? Not sure on how the game rank and the random matching works for the game, is it possible that you won the 15 matches with them and got the rank level as a result of those wins? Not that the sting of getting the revoke is any less painful and the thought of it happening again any less unsettling.