The recent spate of VAC authentication errors have ruined many a game of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and, according to anecdotal reports, Dota 2 in the last week.
Given that the problem is being predominantly experienced in Australia and New Zealand, it’s frustrating that Valve haven’t openly addressed things. But when you’re a tournament organiser and you’re supposed to dole out $55,555 to teams on the weekend, it’s a few stops short of a crisis.
The last thing you want is for your flashy tournament at Melbourne’s Crown Casino to be disrupted by constant online issues, especially if you’re flying two of the most well-known teams in the world — North America’s Cloud9 and Virtus.Pro from Europe — to the event.
With the problems being faced by regular gamers, I asked the local admins how they were responding to the challenge and the response was a little frustrated.
One of the main local organisers explained over e-mail that they were in talks with Valve to find an official solution, although they had some hotchpotch workarounds that will be tested in the coming days. They added that they would “consider offline servers” if all else failed, although it was stressed that option was the absolute last resort.
An official resolution to the issue could mean the growing list of players, particularly those outside Oceania, could be able to play matchmaking games of CS:GO and Dota 2 in peace without being struck down by VAC’s digital lightning bolts.
As for the event at Crown, ESL’s recent merger with ACL Pro ensures that the tournament is stocked with the most competent and experienced organisers in the country. They’ve got too much experience dealing with these kinds of quirks, although wide-scale authentication errors of this scale are — throughout the life of CS:GO — quite rare.
We’ll stay in touch with the event and the growing problems within the game and keep you posted as developments unfold, particularly if Valve comes out with a statement on the issue.
Comments
4 responses to “Crown Casino’s Counter-Strike Invitational Might Use Offline Servers”
They definitely need a backup plan.
Last night playing Dota, I lost connection to the game coordinator multiple times. Had to call it a night after being dumped to the main menu after accepting a game, being unable to reconnect (before even seeing a loading screen) and then taking an abandon.
The server issues right now are nuts.
This VAC issue has been hitting a number of games of late (especially Source games). Been getting this in both Counterstrike and Day of Defeat. Thankfully I only play casually, but for the number of times I’ve seen this happening to myself and other players this is not a good look when playing at competitor level.
many people still play day of defeat?
Yep, not as busy as CS. But still plenty of full servers.