History
VAC was first released with Counter-Strike 1.4 in 2002, following Valve's decision to forego PunkBuster in preference of a proprietary system. The initial version, VAC1, saw success for a period, but in March or April 2004 updates ran dry as the Valve engineers maintaining it moved on to the production of its successor, VAC2.
Valve does not normally discuss VAC, and very little is known about its internal workings. However, on November 17, 2006 they announced that "new technology" had caught "over 10,000" cheating attempts in the preceding week alone, the first real indication of the scale of anti-cheat operations. Not all of the accounts banned would have contained legitimate, purchased games, and there is no external audit on the figure.
As of 2010, unofficial sources estimate that over a million Steam accounts have been banned by VAC.
Read more about this topic: Valve Anti-Cheat
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