Did I get penalized for my opponent hacking?

Yesterday when I logged into CS:GO I got shown a big yellow disclaimer saying something like "In one of your recent games there was a hacker in your team, and you are getting punished for this".

It made me unranked again.

Recently I have only been playing about one competitive match per day, so I was able to check my recent games back to ~April 1st. None of my recent teammates had ever had a VAC ban. The funny thing is: during this period, I had three different opponents who had received a VAC ban within the last 3 days.

So why was I penalized? Even if one of my teammates was hacking (which would mean that he got caught but not banned; my research indicates that none of my recent teammates had received a VAC ban), why would they completely remove my rank for it (especially when I lost every other match to hackers over the last few days)?

Am I really getting it right that this is the way Steam is treating the hacking problem?

They immediately unrank someone who has played alongside a hacker, even when my level of involvement was pretty much just losing two games to a hacker (and winning one!) ?

Also, not informing me about the meaning of my "punishment", nor who it was whose hacking caused this in the first place?

Please don't see this as a rant. I'm just interested in how their punishment system works exactly.

As I see it right now, it would me just cost 10€ and I could make 4 friends make lose their rank by hacking and they would never know it was me since Steam seems to just punish without a detailed explanation.

Is that how it is?

Solution 1:

Steam would tend to revert back the hidden score points determining a rank, when a hacker is caught. This is so, because many people used to pay a hacker, or play with a friend with hack, to rank themselves up. There has been instances of 4 legit (no hacks) people playing together with a hacker (and paying them) to rank up.

So, for quite some time now, If you have been playing with a hacker (regardless of you knowing him or not) and they were caught cheating, the points received would be reverted. If you had ranked up, you'd be deranked to your rank before that game.

Similarly if you had played against a hacker and lost, and then they got banned, you'll get your game loss erased and not count towards your rank.

Basically it would be as if the game with the hacker never happened, nothing more.

I'm sure you'll agree the above is quite fair to both sides. If you had lost against a hacker, its fair that the loss doesn't count, and you don't lose rank because of this. If you had played with a hacker, unwillingly you had an advantage and the win shouldn't really count.

My best guess is the system got confused as the game in question, in your case may have been played a while back or it were more than one game, or something like this (like you lose your rank when you haven't played for a long time) But fear not, I'm pretty sure once you get a victory you'll get your old rank back, with no repercussion to you, whatsoever.