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Now, in a statement also issued on Reddit, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has denied the accusation directly. The original report said that Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC), software designed to stop the use of hacks and cheats in many games available on Steam, was pulling DNS data from its users computers, before sending it back to Valve, a process that it suggested was designed to allow the company to build a picture of Steam users browsing habits. Newell also explained the reasoning for VACs use of DNS data, explaining that as cheats get more advanced, cheat creators for Steams online games can charge money for their hacks. Those cheats phone home to an external DRM server that confirms a cheater has paid to use the cheat, a process that leaves a tell-tale trail in the users DNS entries.