Recently there was a thing where VAC would erroneously flag AMD’s antilag+ feature as cheating, and issue a ban.
AMD then quickly disabled the feature by default but now Valve also patched detection for it and is now, at least according to these patch notes, reversing the bans.
When I was a teenager I played the newest games too, so I won’t judge. Privilege of the young. Today my time is scarce, so I have the luxury of carefully choosing my titles, and I choose DRM free. But back then I would have “needed” to play the newest Assassin’s Creed.