Over 40k Steam Accounts Banned the Day After the Summer Sale Ended

Steam has used its massive ban hammer to pound 40,000 cheating user accounts into dust with the massive number hit on July 6. That date is notable as being the day after the Steam summer sale ended. Some might find it curious that the cheating accounts were given free rein to purchase games all the way until the massively popular Steam Summer sale was over, and then their accounts were banned.

Sure, a person who owns a banned account is able to simply open a new account, but they have to purchase all their games, weapon skins, and DLC again with the new account. PC Gamer says that this massive banning was far larger than the previous one day record set by Valve of 15,000 bans in a single day with that mark being reached on October 12, 2016.

The correlation with the end of the sale also means that banned accounts have to purchase all the new games at full retail rather than grabbing them at any of the discounts offered during the sale. The 40,000 banned user accounts were caught by the Valve Anti-Cheat software and there were another 5,000 bans issued in-game on July 6.

PC Gamer ran the numbers and says that the total value of Counter Strike: Global Offensive weapon skins lost as a result of the banning was almost $9,600. After the bans meted out on July 6, the ban rate dropped significantly with on 954 Valve Anti-Cheat bans handed out on July 7 and another 735 delivered on July 8.