Valve will now stop banned players from trading games on Steam

Valve has taken new steps to stamp out cheating in games and other unpleasant behaviour on its Steam service.

The company has announced that the changes mean that those automatically banned by its Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) system or manually flagged up by developers will no longer be able to gift games marked as supporting VAC or Game Ban to other Steam accounts.

According to Valve, some banned users would use Steam’s ability to send games between accounts to hold multiple copies of a title on a single account and subsequently send a copy to a newly-created profile in order to circumvent their ban.

In addition, accounts that have directly transferred a title to an user that has since banned will similarly be restricted from gifting that specific game.

“We’ve taken these steps to ensure the integrity of the multi-player experience for those participating in online gaming communities,” Valve explained on its refreshed support page.

“We understand that the restrictions on buying to inventory may be inconvenient for some legitimate users, but we believe that these steps will reduce the number of cheaters you’ll play against. And that’s important in having an online gaming experience that’s fair and enjoyable for everyone.”