Rust player bans
How to check a Rust player’s bans
What kinds of bans exist, who issues them, and why one project ban tells you more than an empty VAC field.
Three different bans
People lump them together, but different people issue them under different rules. Read each one on its own terms.
Steam game ban
Issued by the game itself; in Rust that means Easy Anti-Cheat. Steam shows that a ban exists and how many days have passed since the last one, but not which game it came from. On an account with little besides Rust that is easy to read. On an account with a hundred games it is not.
VAC ban
Valve’s anti-cheat ban, also public on the profile. It does not name the game either, but people who cheat rarely stop at one game. VAC on a Rust player proves nothing, but it is a reason to read the rest of the report more carefully.
Project ban
A decision by a specific server’s admins: they watched a demo or called the player in for a check and banned by hand. Steam does not know about these. The large Russian projects publish them, rustbans.ru collects those lists, and the report reads them from there. They carry what Steam lacks: the project, the date and the reason.
How to read a ban
The reason matters more than the fact. A ban for chat abuse and a ban for aim are different stories, and many projects treat refusing a check the same as cheating.
- Reason: aim, macros, refused check, chat
- Date, and how long ago it was
- How many projects reached the same verdict
- A rename shortly after the ban
- Share of friends with bans
Bans among friends
Cheaters tend to play with cheaters. If the friend list is public, the report counts how many friends carry bans. It does not show names, because who exactly is banned is beside the point. But when one friend in five is banned, the player’s own clean profile is less convincing.
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