VAC vs FACEIT: How Counter-Strike 2's Anti-Cheats Differ

Counter-Strike 2 is unusual: the same game is played on two different platforms with two very different anti-cheats. Valve’s official matchmaking runs VAC. FACEIT, the third-party platform most competitive players use, runs its own. Which one you face changes everything about how cheating is caught.

The two side by side

How VAC protects matchmaking

VAC runs in user mode with no kernel driver. Valve’s approach is to make cheating expensive after the fact rather than impossible up front:

• Delayed bans, so cheat makers cannot tell what was caught.
• VAC Live, which watches matches as they are played and can cancel a match on the spot when it flags a cheater.
• Overwatch, where experienced players review the demo of a reported account.

A VAC ban is permanent, shows on your Steam profile and cannot be removed by Steam Support.

How FACEIT protects its matches

FACEIT is a separate platform. Players install its client, queue through it and play on FACEIT’s servers. Its anti-cheat is kernel-level and must be running for you to play.

FACEIT has also raised the hardware bar steadily:

• TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot have been mandatory for every FACEIT player since 25 November 2025. FACEIT uses the TPM to get a signed record that the PC booted cleanly with Secure Boot on.
• IOMMU and virtualization-based security began rolling out in April 2025 and have been enforced for every player above 3,000 Elo since August 2025. The IOMMU is aimed squarely at DMA cards: it acts as a firewall that stops plug-in devices reading game memory.

What the difference means in practice

Detection. FACEIT sees far more of the PC than VAC, earlier, and checks how the PC booted. VAC sees less and leans on what happens in matches.

Setup. Playing FACEIT means firmware settings switched on and the FACEIT client running. Matchmaking needs nothing beyond Steam.

The players you meet. FACEIT’s stricter environment and its own matchmaking are why serious players prefer it. Matchmaking is where most people actually play.

What a ban costs. A FACEIT ban removes you from FACEIT. A VAC ban is permanent, public on your Steam profile and, as Valve puts it, cannot be removed by Steam Support.

Common misconceptions

“FACEIT has no cheaters.” Stricter requirements raise the cost of cheating; they do not end it. FACEIT’s IOMMU rollout exists because DMA hardware was being used to get around its client.

“VAC does nothing.” VAC bans arrive on a delay, which makes VAC look idle. Meanwhile VAC Live cancels matches as they happen, Overwatch reviews reported demos and every VAC ban is permanent.

“The same build works on both.” The two anti-cheats look at different things in different ways, so a build made for one is not made for the other. That is why our FACEIT build is a separate product.

Running both on one PC

If you use FACEIT and also want to use an Elocarry build in VAC matchmaking, the two do not mix. FACEIT’s anti-cheat is one of the boot-time anti-cheats our troubleshooting guides ask you to uninstall before loading a build, alongside Vanguard and ESEA, because they can stop the loader or crash the overlay. Uninstall it, restart, and reinstall it when you want to play FACEIT again.

Elocarry and Counter-Strike 2

The live Counter-Strike 2 build is made for Valve’s VAC matchmaking: Premier, Competitive, Wingman, Casual, Deathmatch and the rest of the official modes. It is polymorphic and rebuilt whenever Valve patches the game or VAC.

FACEIT is a different anti-cheat, so it gets a different build. That build is in development, with its own waitlist in Discord. Until it launches, nothing we sell is meant for FACEIT, and you should not load the VAC build there.