Riot Games already faced growing concerns over the anti-cheat system that comes with Valorant, its most recent game that’s currently on Beta. Most players were concerned over the possibility that the system is collecting information, especially since it loads up during system boot – a behavior unlike the anti-cheat systems in other Riot games like League of Legends (LOL). So to address the growing unrest over the system, Valorant programmer and anti-cheat lead Paul ‘Riot Arkem’ Chamberlain explained the company’s side on Reddit where most players voiced their complaint.
“Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn’t scan anything (unless the game is running), it’s designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn’t communicate to our servers. This is good for stopping cheaters because a common way to bypass anti-cheat systems is to load cheats before the anti-cheat system starts and either modify system components to contain the cheat or to have the cheat tamper with the anti-cheat system as it loads. Running the driver at system startup time makes this significantly more difficult,” Chamberlain explained.
Chamberlain further explained that Valorant’s anti-cheat system is programmed not to trust a PC unless Vanguard is already running, which is why it is loaded at system start up. He asked players to trust Riot with regard to how the anti-cheat system works and to think of Vanguard as a specialized antivirus program that protects Valorant. However, Riot games added that they are open to changing their tactics based on player expectations.
