VAC's success at identifying cheats and banning those who use them has also provided a boost in the purchasing of private cheats. Some servers implement a vote system, in which case players can call for a vote to kick or ban the cheater. Like any software detection system, some cheats are not detected by VAC, and at times the only effective anti-cheat solution is a human administrator watching an online game. Since 2017, Valve has been implementing deep learning systems (known as VACnet) to detect cheaters with more certainty and deliver them to the Overwatch system.

The idea of a human-run cheat identification system was implemented as the Overwatch system. To some players, this human-based system is much more effective than the VAC system. Some servers implement a 'vote-kick' or 'vote-ban' system that allows players to vote to kick or ban alleged hackers from a single server. With the second version, Valve instituted a policy of 'delayed bans', the theory being that once a new hack is developed which circumvents the VAC system, it will spread amongst the 'cheating' community - by delaying the initial ban by approximately 3-4 weeks, Valve hopes to identify (and ban) as many cheaters as possible. Since VAC's second version, cheaters are not banned automatically.

With the first version of VAC, a ban took force almost instantly after being detected, and the cheater had to wait 2 years to have the account unbanned. This window appeared when attempting to connect a VAC-Secured after being banned

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