AMD Anti-Lag+ Technology Causes Bans in Popular Shooters
Recent reports have revealed that AMD’s Anti-Lag+ technology has encountered significant issues in popular shooters like Counter Strike 2 (CS2). The latest version of the Adrenalin 23.10.1 WHQL drivers, which include this technology, has a major problem – it activates Anti-Lag+ in CS2. Unfortunately, Valve’s anticheat system, VAC, detects this as cheating and results in the banning of user accounts.
The severity of the issue is evident as even the official CS2 account has acknowledged the problem caused by AMD Anti-Lag+. In a brief statement, they expressed hope that AMD would release an update to address the issue and unban affected users. This implies that the bans are a consequence of AMD’s poor implementation of the technology.
It is important to note that this issue only affects AMD’s Anti-Lag+ and not NVIDIA Reflex. The reason behind this is that AMD implements driver support, while NVIDIA integrates the technology natively within the game.
«AMD’s latest driver has made its «Anti-Lag/+» feature available for CS2, which is implemented by bypassing engine dll functions. If you are an AMD customer and playing CS2, DO NOT ENABLE ANTI-LAG/+; any manipulation of the CS code will result in a VAC ban. Once AMD sends an update, we can do the work of identifying the affected users and reversing their ban.»
AMD Anti-Lag+ not only affects CS2, but also other shooters like Call of Duty or Apex Legends
Unfortunately, the problems with Anti-Lag+ technology extend beyond CS2. Any game that has protection against cheating may ban your account if AMD’s technology manipulates the game’s DLL files. This is why tampering with files in competitive multiplayer games is strictly prohibited and can lead to bans.
Call of Duty games, including Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 1 and 2, have been experiencing random performance issues due to this problem. Although these issues have been present for about a month, it is now clear that the performance problems and crashes in Call of Duty are linked to the use of an AMD GPU with Anti-Lag+ technology enabled.
In other games, such as Apex Legends, there have been reports of fake account bans. These bans are also believed to be related to AMD’s technology.
«AMD has been alerted to an issue where players using AMD Anti-Lag+ technology on Radeon graphics while playing Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) are unintentionally triggering a Valve Anti-Cheat ban (VAC Ban). AMD is working with Valve to resolve the issue and will provide more details as they become available. AMD recommends gamers to use Adrenalin Edition 23.10.1 software that does not activate Anti-Lag+ technology in CS2 until further notice,»