The Armory update was one of the biggest patches in CS2’s short year-long history. But it also invited a flood of money-hungry players looking to exploit the XP system and farm stars as quickly as possible, ruining casual matchmaking in the process. Now, Valve has decided to ban them all.

Whether you’re a streamer or a casual player, you won’t be spared from Valve’s sharp banhammer that has gone after anyone found to have participated in exploiting deathmatch and casual matches to farm Armory Pass XP. According to Pricempire on X, several popular CS2 content creators including ArrowCS, Aquaismissing, Duwap, and others have been handed one-year trading bans for their participation in Armory Pass XP farming in the game’s casual modes, while the CS2 subreddit sees countless other players suffering the same fate. Interestingly, Anomaly, one of the biggest CS2 creators who created a video demonstrating how to perform the Dust 2 XP exploit, has yet to be banned at the time of writing.

The Armory Pass is a system introduced by Valve in the most recent cosmetic-focused Armory update. It allows players to earn stars through gameplay and exchange them for cosmetic rewards including charms, stickers, sprays, cases, and weapon skins. Players quickly found ways to farm the Armory Pass XP by completely ruining CS2's Casual mode, as most players would simply throw grenades at each other at certain spots to make rounds last as short as possible and earn as much Armory Pass XP as possible. Valve paid close attention to what was happening and decided to roll out long-term trading bans for anyone found participating, though it is highly likely that exploits will continue as time goes on.

The situation also raises the question of whether or not major streamers are exempt from Valve's rules, with many Redditors pointing out that Anomaly, the biggest name in the CS2 skins and trading world, was not banned despite his direct involvement in the whole affair.