Anti-Lag+ ensures VAC is blocked in CS2, and AMD prevents drivers from connecting to the Internet

Last week, GPU manufacturer AMD released a new version of the Adrenalin driver. Version 23.10.1 was actually intended to bring happiness to Counter-Strike 2 players; After all, the feature called “Anti-Lag+” promised to improve response time in the first-person shooter. The emphasis is on “actually”, because as it turned out in the first few hours after the release of the new Adrenalin, it causes a permanent VAC ban in Counter-Strike 2.

VAC refers to Valve’s anti-cheat software, which will likely sound an alarm when the Anti-Lag+ feature is activated. The background behind this is very simple: Anti-Lag+ manipulates engine DLL files that belong to CS2, the game’s official Twitter account wrote. Since VAC does not distinguish what exactly is being changed and only evaluates the fact itself, if Anti-Lag+ is used, VAC rules it out immediately.

Accordingly, it is recommended to avoid activating the Anti-Lag+ function, at least for the time being. AMD has already responded And I took Adrenalin driver version 23.10.1 offline. We are also in close contact with Valve to resolve the issue; After the update, even illegally banned CS2 players will have to be unbanned again. With an Nvidia graphics card, Counter-Strike 2 players don’t have to worry (yet) about this VAC blocking. Although there is an equivalent latency-reducing feature called Reflex, this is implemented directly in the game rather than via the driver.