Cheating in multiplayer games is a constant annoyance, which no developer seems to have a concrete solution for. However, Riot Games’ Valorant can often be credited as having one of the better anti-cheat solutions out there – at least in terms of effectiveness.
Vanguard has been banning large hordes of cheaters consistently for quite some time, and it could be argued that Valorant is one of the few games that take cheating (especially in competitive levels) a lot more seriously as opposed to the competition.
Valorant bans 500,000 bot accounts globally
As detailed within a recent X post from GamerDoc (@ItsGamerDoc), Valorant has managed to pull off yet another massive ban wave, targeting a large number of bot accounts this time around.
We have launched another bot ban wave on VALORANT, this time targeting ~500k accounts globally. Again, if you haven’t manually leveled your accounts, the ban is correctly placed, and you will be met with the screenshot in the tweet. In our efforts to combat this, we’ll be… pic.twitter.com/NEoqtD7f3h
— GamerDoc (@ItsGamerDoc) February 26, 2025
The number of affected accounts are assumed to be around 500,000 – and targets bots only, as mentioned by the Tweet. Any account suspected of botting will face an immediate ban, assuming that these accounts have not been manually levelled up either. Furthermore, this ban cycle is expected to refresh every 2 weeks, with newer bots being captured in the net during this time period.
Vanguard has also implemented a HWID (hardware level ID identifier) check, which ensures that these banned accounts simply cannot reinstall the game and begin their shenanigans once more – at least without a huge amount of effort involved.
After all, fair competition cannot exist without any form of intervention to weed out bad actors, and Riot Games’ actions are to be commended here.
They are, after all, seriously taking care of cheaters in their games – as opposed to other competitors that give them a free pass, and fail to follow up on these bans. Cracking down on cheaters keeps the community happy, and the game a lot more palatable as a result.
However, it should be kept in mind that this is a cat and mouse game, and cheaters will most definitely find a way to circumvent these bans, at least until Riot manages to squash them again.
While effective, a kernel level anticheat brings with it some serious concerns
Valorant’s Vanguard anti-cheat has not been without its fair share of controversy though. For starters, the anti-cheat employed here is of the rootkit variety, which means it hooks itself into the Windows kernel at startup.
This allows for a lot more precise monitoring, but also at the potential cost of user privacy and control – rootkits can after all, do literally anything to your PC considering their unrestricted access.
Another side effect of using such an invasive anti-cheat is the fact that it makes the game entirely incompatible on alternative operating systems, such as Linux (and by extension, the Steam Deck).
Privacy and security concerns aside, the fact that Vanguard uses hardware level logging is also a double edged sword. HWID bans could prove to be quite problematic in nature, especially when we take into consideration that these ‘blacklisted’ PC components could be sold off to an unsuspecting buyer.
Affected buyers would then be effectively locked out of further Valorant matches, which is very likely to happen unless Riot Games has some countermeasures and/or finer HWID tracking in place.
Either way, while Valorant’s efforts to tackle cheaters is indeed commendable, its approach toward the same can be quite difficult to justify at times, and it is hoped that they manage to create a less invasive version of Vanguard in the future – although that seems quite unlikely.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
