CS:GO contributed to the record number of Steam players who fell prey to Valve's banhammer last month
Valve banned over 600,000 accounts on Steam over the course of December.
December was a busy month for most people, what with frantic, last minute Christmas shopping, navigating the waters of family time over the holiday, and getting banned on Steam.
The Valve Anti-Cheat system caught the little tinkers who fell into the latter category in waves of bans throughout the month of December, with Twitter user Nors3 noting that most of them were for CS: GO (via PCGamesN).
His total figure of 609,373 banned accounts in December 2018 is in the same ballpark as SteamDB's reported stat of 609,378, making for a record number of bans on the platform.
The huge increase in VAC bans, notably associated with CS: GO, can be tied to Valve's announcement last month that CS: GO would be going free-to-play, as well as the rollout of the game's Danger Zone battle royale mode.
The first two of five significant ban waves were made within a week of these in-game changes, with three more following over the holiday period.
Things seem to be calming down for the most part though; we're a week into January and VAC bans are sitting at around 42,000 right now, which seems on track for an average month.