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CS2 is currently one of the most popular games ever, boasting an impressive number of players. There are some disadvantages of having so many active users though. The biggest of these are cheaters and other players who ruin the game for everyone else. That’s why Valve created Overwatch back in CS:GO. Overwatch was a system in which trusted, experienced community members reviewed reported players and helped decide who got banned.
Classic Overwatch did not make it into CS2 when the game launched in September 2023. In August 2026, Valve introduced an invite-only successor: the VACNet Labeling Portal. Here’s how the new system works and how the classic CS:GO Overwatch worked.
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Overwatch in CS2: the VACNet Labeling Portal
CS2 launched without Overwatch, and for almost three years there was no community review system at all. That changed in August 2026, when Valve started inviting selected players to the VACNet Labeling Portal.
Invited players see a VACNet icon in the main menu. After opting in, they log in to a separate web portal at counter-strike.net/vacnet and watch short clips of suspected players. For each clip, they label what they see, such as aim assistance, wallhacks, auto-bhop scripts or bot accounts.
The key difference from CS:GO: these labels don’t ban anyone directly. They are used to train VACNet, Valve’s AI anti-cheat, and any enforcement is handled separately by Valve. Valve hasn’t published who gets invited or whether reviewers get any reward.
Cheaters show up in practically all CS2 ranks, so a better-trained VACNet should make matchmaking fairer for everyone. Remember – if you need to sell CS2 skins, be sure to do it at SkinsMonkey, where you’ll always get the best prices.
How Classic Overwatch Worked in CS:GO
In CS:GO, Overwatch let experienced players, called Investigators, review players who had been reported a suspicious number of times. Investigators found the Overwatch icon right in the main menu. Each case was a recording of eight rounds, downloaded to their PC, which they watched through the eyes of the reported player. Playback controls such as fast-forward and rewind helped them focus on the moments where the player was likely cheating.
In the recording, the reported player appeared only as “Suspect,” with their name hidden. Text and voice chat weren’t included, so the verdict was based on gameplay alone. The biggest benefit for the community was that reported cheaters actually got reviewed, by players who knew the game well.
How Were Investigators Selected?
Valve never published the exact criteria. Factors such as competitive wins, account age, total hours played, the number of reports against the account and skill group were believed to matter. To unlock Overwatch, players reportedly needed a rank of at least Gold Nova I and a significant number of competitive wins.
Commonly cited criteria for CS:GO Investigators:
- Trust Factor of the account
- Total game hours
- Prime Status
- Competitive match wins
How Did a Cheater End Up in Overwatch?
The most obvious reason was getting reported too often. If someone was reported frequently for cheating or disruptive behavior within a certain period, their case went to Overwatch. Besides cheaters, this also caught toxic players.
That’s why it mattered which reason you selected when reporting a player. A player who was reported often in a cheating category, such as wallhack or aimbot, ended up in Overwatch quickly.
What Offenses Could Investigators Flag?
Investigators gave a verdict on each of the four categories below. The new CS2 portal uses similar labels: aim assistance, wallhacks, auto-bhop and bot accounts.
- Aim Assistance: Selected when a player gains an advantage by using a program to aim, such as an aimbot, triggerbot, silent aim or other aim hacks. Often, the suspect’s aim alone gives the cheat away.
- Vision Assistance: Some cheaters avoid aim cheats so they don’t get caught. Instead, they use wallhacks that let them see opponents through walls. Cheats that remove the effects of smokes and flashbangs also fall into this category.
- Other External Assistance: This covers cheats such as automatic bunny hopping, backtracking and radar hacks. Backtracking is one of the hardest cheats to detect: the cheater hits opponents where they were a moment earlier. To Investigators, this often looked like lag, which could lead to a wrong “Insufficient Evidence” verdict.
- Griefing: This category covers toxic behavior toward your own team and is usually easy to spot. It was used for players who intentionally killed, harmed or abandoned their teammates, especially in official competitive matchmaking.
What Verdicts Could Investigators Give?
For each of the four categories, Investigators chose between two verdicts: “Insufficient Evidence” when they found no violation, or “Evident Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” when the player was clearly guilty. If they had trouble deciding, they could postpone the case and come back to it later.
A single verdict was never enough. A case was closed with a penalty only when enough Investigators reached the same conclusion, and verdicts from Investigators with a higher Overwatch score carried more weight. If Investigators found the evidence insufficient or didn’t agree, the case was closed without a penalty. So if you were only reported a few times, you had nothing to worry about.
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What Happened After a Conviction?
A player convicted of griefing received a temporary cooldown from competitive matchmaking and could play normally again once it ended. A conviction for any of the three cheating offenses led to a permanent ban. It’s often called a VAC ban, but officially it’s a game ban, which shows up on the player’s Steam profile.
Could You Appeal an Overwatch Ban?
No. Valve doesn’t offer appeals for Overwatch or VAC bans, and Steam Support won’t remove them. The reasoning: an Overwatch ban never rested on a single Investigator, but on several reviewers reaching the same conclusion.
What Did Investigators Get Out of It?
Not much. The main reward was in-game XP, and the amount depended on the Investigator’s Overwatch score, which reflected their past accuracy and activity in Overwatch.
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