In a new effort to reduce the amount of cheating that goes on in multiplayer games, a new Steam ban is in effect. It gives qualifying developers the power to ban cheaters from multiplayer.

Like many of Steam’s changes that give more power to devs—paid mods, early access, and Greenlight—this decision has been met with a lot of skepticism and concern from the Steam community. Are developers being given too much power here? What’s the potential for mistakes in handing out a Steam ban? And what can gamers do if they feel the system is being exploited?

Concern 1: Does The Steam Ban Give Devs Too Much Control?

Critics of Steam’s new policy on banning have some valid concerns about how much power this gives developers. While the game development community has a lot of great people making great games, past controversies have people a little wary. A lot of this comes from the Greenlight and early access parts of Steam, where some developers have responded less than ideally to feedback. Some people are concerned that this program would give developers the power to target critics (unfairly) with the ban, not just prolific cheaters.

Thankfully, Steam’s full description of this system offers a little more insight into what this program will actually do. First, developers will actually have to be approved to use this system. The description doesn’t explain how approval is awarded—likely to avoid shady developers from gaming the system—but hopefully past behavior is assessed to determine who will use the ban in limited and fair fashion.

There are also a couple of checks in place if you find yourself the victim of an unwarranted Steam ban. First, Steam recommends contacting the developer to appeal the ban, as they have the data that would explain why the ban was enacted. If that falls through, the player can contact Valve, who will investigate and, if necessary, remove the dev’s ability to ban players.

Concern 2: What About False Positives?

Some players have fallen victim to a Steam ban thanks to false positives with the Valve Anti-Cheat System (VAC). Since Valve is a pretty big business with a lot of resources to find cheating, some users are concerned that more false positives will occur once devs are overseeing the Steam ban process themselves.

That potential is certainly there. If developers are running their own versions of VAC to detect cheaters, it’s possible that upticks in false positives might happen. However, there’s also a lot more potential for exploits, hacks, and cheats to be dealt with better. Rather than relying on software to detect cheating across all games, developers can target the most common problems, addressing specific issues rather than broad ones. With the checks and balances systems outlined above, there’s good potential for this program to crack down on niche cheating, like infinite health exploits in Dark Souls II. False positives are possible, but the ability to appeal unfair bans should help eliminate much of the concern.

Concern 3: But I Own My Games! How Can I Be Banned?

Bad news—you don’t really own your games. Laws around software ownership are nebulous and confusing, but the short version is that when you make a purchase on Steam you’re actually purchasing a license, not the game itself. The same is true of games you own in physical form; you own the disc, not the game, and your access to it can be revoked at any time. If you’re banned from Steam for any reason, your access to your games goes with it in accordance with the Steam Subscriber Agreement you sign upon creating your account. Our digital software ownership laws may be due for revisions, but that’s a whole other discussion.

That leads us to one other potential bright spot in this new Steam ban program. Developers only have the ability to ban you from multiplayer, not the game itself. If you receive a multiplayer ban for cheating, you can carry on playing the single-player version while you appeal or wait for the ban to expire. If it’s not a multiplayer-only ban, sorry—you’re out of luck. You’ll have to appeal and count on the fact that you weren’t really doing anything wrong, right?

Another bit of good news is that the ban will only apply to the developer’s game. If you receive a ban for cheating in Team Fortress 2, that won’t affect your ability to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 online. Still, there are exceptions. A ban in Team Fortress 2 will prevent you from playing Counter-Strike: Source as well as other Source games in the list on Valve’s VAC ban FAQ page.

So what’s the takeaway from this new Steam ban system? Hopefully it will help target specific exploits rather than relying on reports and the automated VAC system to root out every cheater in the system—and Valve does have a system in place for those who feel developers are abusing the system. There’s still big potential for problems, so be careful what mods you’re installing and what programs you’re running. While you might be using Cheat Engine for a totally innocuous purpose, it might not be recognized as such—don’t get stuck in a Steam ban thanks to oversight. And more importantly, don’t cheat in online games.