Many of the new player base who started playing CS2 include those who left Counter-Strike: Global Offensive several years ago. Since many of the CSGO players left CSGO because they got VAC banned, a common question keeps circulating the web about whether they can play CS2. To help answer that, here’s an explanation of whether you can play CS2 if you are VAC-banned on CSGO.
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Can You Play CS2 If You Are VAC Banned On CSGO?
Getting straight to the point, the short answer is no. If you are VAC banned on CSGO, you can not play CS2. You don’t have to take our word for it. Valve covered this topic on the official Steam support page for the Counter-Strike 2 release. On that support page, Valve has stated that VAC bans, game bans, and competitive cooldowns carry over from CSGO to Counter-Strike 2.
In other words, if you received a VAC ban back when you were playing CSGO, the ban will carry over to Counter-Strike 2, preventing you from playing the game. That’s because CS2 is essentially the same game as CSGO. They aren’t two different games where if you got a VAC ban on one, you could play the other on the same Steam account. You can think of CS2 as a big update for CSGO, which also changed the title.
However, even if CSGO and CS2 were two separate games, it is very likely that you still wouldn’t be able to play CS2 if you got banned on CSGO, and vice versa. That’s because a VAC ban isn’t limited to just one game. When you get a VAC ban, you aren’t allowed to play several games from Valve, which would have also included CS2 if it was a separate game.
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Expert Take
“If you have a VAC ban on CSGO, you won’t be able to play CS2’s Competitive or Premier modes since they share the same account restrictions. However, you can still access other modes like Casual and Deathmatch. The ban carries over because CS2 uses the same backend, so your VAC status remains linked across both games.” – Pawel ‘Biegan’ Bieganowski
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Conclusion
Sadly, if you had a VAC ban on CSGO, you would not be able to play CS2, at least on the same Steam account. That’s because everything, even bans, gets carried over to CS2 from CSGO. To play CS2, you’ll have to create a new Steam account and then start playing on that.
