FACEIT Returned 71.9M Elo: Inside the Season 8 Ban Report

FACEIT has published its second seasonal integrity report, covering Season 8, from April 22 to August 4, 2026. The headline number: 71.9 million Elo points returned to more than 1.2 million players whose matches were overturned. Those matches add up to 570,791.

The interesting part isn't the size of the numbers, though. It's how they break down, because the rating stolen from an average player rarely goes to a cheater.

The season in numbers

Those bans cover everything at once: cheating, smurfing, ban evasion, unsportsmanlike conduct and platform abuse.

Smurfs steal the rating, not cheaters

Here's where the report breaks the common assumption. Of the 71.9 million Elo returned, 69.0 million came from smurfing cases. Cheating accounts for 1.49 million, ban evasion for 1.45 million.

In other words, 96% of the stolen rating was taken not by people running software, but by players queueing on a second account and rolling a lobby they have no business being in. Cheating bans for the whole season number just 707, two orders of magnitude below smurfing, where 61,849 accounts were penalized.

FACEIT attributes the 22% per-day drop in cheating bans to closing the main pipeline rather than looking less hard: mandatory IOMMU and VBS (motherboard and Windows protections against DMA cheats) reached 100% coverage of the player base. It was 88% at the start of the season and 97.3% by June 2; in Season 9 both settings are required from everyone.

How the Elo refund works

The mechanic is spelled out in the report: when an account is banned for cheating, smurfing or ban evasion, the platform returns rating to players affected across the cheater's last 100 matches within 90 days. The window is deliberately fixed, so a banned user can't work out when exactly they were caught by looking at how far back the reversal goes.

The practical takeaway: your Elo doesn't come back when you lose to a smurf, but when that smurf gets caught, and only if it happens inside that window. That's why rating sometimes lands weeks after a match you've long forgotten.

A separate lever is the selfie re-check. FACEIT issued 73,484 re-verification requests on multi-account signals during the season. Of those, 26,555 accounts (36.1%) failed to complete it and stay out of matchmaking until they verify with matching ID.

What changed in Season 9

• Longer bans. Cheating now costs 5 years instead of 2, and escalates to permanent on evasion.
• Human Input Detection went live on August 5. It's a machine-learning layer that looks for input no human could produce, rather than for the cheat itself. It was tested quietly all spring: 48,000 hours analyzed by mid-May, then 2.7 million hours across the final 30 days of Season 8. In the first week of Season 9 it got more than 100 players banned.
• Work with Google. FACEIT anti-cheat developers and data scientists spent two days at Google's London office developing two approaches with their engineers: training models on confirmed cheating cases, and modelling normal play to flag anomalies.
• Independent audit. The anti-cheat was reviewed by Intorqa, an intelligence firm that infiltrates and reports on cheating communities for major publishers.

Three exploits closed during the season

• the console command sv_grenade_trajectory_prac_pipreview let players see enemy positions through the grenade camera, fixed server-side;
• knife-round spawn positions matched the pistol round that followed, letting teams build strats on information they shouldn't have, flagged by Major semi-finalist STYKO;
• viewangle command abuse for 180-degree turn scripts was blocked, and testscript access on FACEIT servers was disabled.

On the conduct side, 64,806 accounts were actioned for unsportsmanlike behavior in Season 8, while the new policy claims to leave more room for harmless banter, the same reasoning behind the halftime all-chat trial at the start of Season 9.

What it means for you

The odds of getting back rating taken by an unfair opponent are visibly better: everyone caught up in those 570,791 overturned matches was compensated. But don't count on it: the refund only works inside the 100-match, 90-day window, and most rating still leaks to smurfs who get caught automatically, after the fact.

For contrast, Valve runs its own numbers and its own mechanics: VAC bans arrive in waves, and this summer the company patched a hole that let cheaters dodge VACnet. There's no rating refund in official matchmaking at all, and that remains a third-party platform perk. And for FACEIT at its absolute limit, see donk's 95-kill record.

FAQ

Why does FACEIT return Elo?

For matches overturned after an opponent was banned for cheating, smurfing or ban evasion. Compensation covers the offender's last 100 matches within 90 days, and everyone affected in those matches gets their rating back automatically.

How much Elo did FACEIT return in Season 8?

71.9 million points to more than 1.2 million players across 570,791 overturned matches. Of that, 69.0 million came from smurfing, 1.49 million from cheating and 1.45 million from ban evasion.

How many accounts did FACEIT ban?

109,232 in Season 8 (April 22 – August 4, 2026), up 37% per day on Season 7. That includes 61,849 for smurfing and multi-accounting, 707 for cheating and 1,365 for ban evasion. The 64,806 accounts actioned for unsportsmanlike conduct are a separate line in the report, so they don't simply add up with the ban total.

What is Human Input Detection on FACEIT?

A machine-learning system launched on August 5, 2026. It analyzes player input and flags movement that would be impossible for a human, catching cheaters by behavior rather than by software signature. More than 100 accounts were banned through it in its first week.

Why are there more smurfing bans than cheating bans?

Smurfing is far more widespread and easier to detect automatically: 61,849 bans against 707 for cheating in one season. And smurfs account for 96% of all the rating the platform later gives back.