Just because you've only now just seen that forum post (and imo, it coming from a Valve employee makes it official) doesn't mean there was no warning about it. It's been known for awhile now that Valve doesn't really like these transparent viewmodel plugins or FOV changing plugins, and that VAC bans could take place due to the nature of how they work. This is a big part of why no leagues in North America allow them.

oh but ugc allows them right
anyway, they've released announcements saying steam customers should watch out for xxx before, they could've done that now too and therefore the bans are unjustified considering that the plugin went quite viral with releases all over competitive tf2. Valve could've made it clear to everyone if they wanted to.
also a forum post is not official because who would check the thread on SPUF about it when it was released in a different place

if you dont know how to use open plugin, just simply dont use it. I have no idea how the hell you are getting banned wtf

it was most likely not openplugin that got them banned :^)

Poor Moose :(
Does this mean you can't play tonight?

Nah, OpenPlugin is not allowed in UGC either, just it's kinda really difficult to find out who is using it given the nature of the league.

I dunno, given how it is loaded (in an unintended way that uses a loophole pretty much), and what it does, I wouldn't be surprised if VAC bans happened. It lets you get around restrictions that Valve has gone out of their way to maintain as restrictions.

Also that post was spread to several competitive sites last year, and I think a Valve employee warning about these types of plugins on a Valve owned forum is pretty official enough.

Though it still hasn't been proven that this plugin is responsible for bans yet (or that Moose is actually clean etc). That's the thing about VAC, it's really difficult to find out what actually got someone banned.

Yeah, that makes sense I guess. I doubt anyone would confirm he used cheats etc.

the problem with openplugin is that even though the shit it bypasses/allows is relatively benign, the mechanism it uses isn't

what do you mean "the mechanism" ?

I'm not a VAC expert but I don't see why they would indiviually ban people when there's thousands of people using the same plugin. Wouldn't one ban wave for all be cleaner and send a clearer message?

I've seen a few previous posters talk about FOV, so I guess I will just ask here for my peace of mind:

The actual FOV is locked at a maximum of 90, correct? But is tinkering with your viewmodel FOV permissible in leagues, as it is a readily available console command?

yeah, you can set your viewmodel FOV to whatever you want, or even just turn it off.

thanks :)

Actually, interesting thing here. Traditionally, Valve does not do the "Ban Wave" thing; this is in part to hide their hand a little, not clearly letting on that they know about certain cheating mechanisms. If an update to some aimbot software came out, and immediately afterwards there were hundreds of bans, users would spread the word and revert back to the previous version. This way Valve can slowly but surely root out cheaters while keeping them guessing about how much Valve knows.
SOURCE: Someone smarter than me.

What it comes down to is Valve trying to dissuade people from using hacks. They don't want to ban 10,000 accounts, they would rather ban a couple of people who they knew people would find out about so that people would realize that it wasn't approved of. If they simply ban everyone who has OpenPlugin installed, supposing they have a way of doing that, they would show everyone that they could do that, piss off the community at large, and have to deal with 10,000 pissed-off nerds. No one wants to deal with that. So they attempt to scare off the majority by taking measures against individuals. It's pretty likely that these will be reverted, but by the time that happens, OpenPlugin will be a lot less popular, if conclusive proof is brought up that it was the cause.

OpenPlugin has been out for a while and this is the first time I've ever heard of someone getting VAC banned because of using it. There are literally dozens of possible reasons for why Moose could have been banned such as trading duped items or even being accused of cheating. Lets not just jump straight into conclusions.
Lets put it this way, if there were 1000 hackers then said hackers would ALL get banned, not just 1 or 2. This would be similar to OpenPlugin except,it isn't.
Just my opinion though.

you don't get VAC banned for this. VAC bans are automatic and triggered by the detection of a known cheat signature.

valve has used manual VAC bans once, and it was an extremely special case.

If you dupe items in tf2 using steamsupport, you just get one of these as well as a notification you are perma trade banned on the second page. Not a vac ban :3

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/1082/duperlol.png

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/1082/duperlol.png

Imagine if every OpenPlugin user got banned, pretty sure I'd die of laughter

moose got banned for using open plugin

vhalin got banned for cheating in plants vs zombies

its the circle of life

VACs arent hand picked. If one person gets banned for the plugin, everyone who used it will get banned by the end of the week. You guys should also stop acting surprised that people use the plugin in UGC, after all its a free league with no client.

I've played all my UGC games with OpenPlugin, had no idea it was not allowed

Ye, original Golden Wrench #1 (Mr Kaori), Drunkenfool, and some dude I forget the name of who was abusing an old SourceMod exploit in the same server as a Valve developer have all been manual banned. They pretty much only reserve those for extraordinary cases or for people who dudes at Valve blatantly catch cheating.

I doubt OpenPlugin caused it, mind, but there's a lot of things that can set VAC off so it's hard to say.

i use the mat_picmap changer for open plugin, is that against esea or ugc rules even if i provide a pov that shows no fov modifiers were used?

If I were valve and I wanted to tell people that open plugin was not ok to use I'd ban someone who'd get noticed, not ban all of the people who are using a plugin that, to them, seems benign. If they made an automatic ban wave for the plugin think of how many people in etf2l would get vac'd, it'd destroy the league.

UGC doesnt matter no client
ESEA client will ban you

No, it won't ban you. You simply cannot use any plugins when connecting to an ESEA server. If you attempt to join an ESEA server with a plugin loaded it will kick you and display a message telling you to unload your plugins before joining the server.

Also for those of you who are saying that only some people are getting VAC'd because valve wants to set an example or scare off other people from using open plugin... that's retarded. This isn't kindergarten where the teacher would put that idiot kid in the dunce chair to show the other kids where you'll end up if you act like an idiot. VAC is an automated cheat detecting system. It's responsible for protecting 50+ games that are played by hundreds of thousands of people. It doesn't think or have a conscious, it just detects cheaters and bans them at seemingly random intervals weeks after detection. Yes, the system isn't perfect and there have been false-positive detections, most notably in July 2010, when 12k owners of COD:MW2 were falsely banned. But guess what? Every single false-positive ban was lifted. As far as I'm concerned; moose, vhalin and friends, at some point in their gaming career, used cheats.

how would this be more effective than a message saying "we have disabled access to this plugin, do not use it and do not make any more like it"
seriously I would think that would work better than vaccing someone because valve would be really clear about it

I don't know why people would want to risk it =/ Having to use -insecure is a red flag to me