Riot Games has finally launched the Vanguard anti-cheat feature in League of Legends. Many users have expressed concerns and shared negative technical experiences following the update, with some claiming the update bricked their computers. In response, Riot Games publicly expressed support for the implementation, noting the relatively small number of reports relative to the overall player base and identifying key causes and solutions.
Vanguard – a kernel-level anti-cheat software – has been controversial ever since it was implemented in Riot Games’ FPS Valorant in 2020. These concerns include privacy issues, as it not only provides access to the most authoritative layer of the operating system; Take screenshots of your gameplay to make sure you’re not using any nasty cheats. As an always-running kernel-level software, its CPU usage is high and can cause damage to players’ older machines.
With that background, we can look back at this week’s outburst from some in the League of Legends community. As soon as the Vanguard patch went live, reports started appearing on social media Pointing to bricked computer
This all caused quite a stir, as these recent serious issues mixed with pre-existing concerns to create the whirlwind of controversy surrounding League of Legends. In response, Riot Games released a statement on Reddit setting out its main points.
First, Riot noted how Vanguard’s rollout is progressing. Despite these reports, the company believes everything is going well, writing: “Overall, the rollout is going well and we’re already seeing Vanguard working as expected. We’ve seen a significant reduction in bot accounts in the usual places, and we Will continue to pay attention to this matter.”
“Less than 0.03% of players have reported issues with Vanguard since 14.9 went live. In most cases, these are common error codes, such as VAN codes 128, 152, 1067, -81, 9001, or 68, which can Support or troubleshooting is made easy by players and the vast majority of issues we see are actively investigated if you encounter an issue like this.”
Riot subsequently addressed reports of bricked Vanguard hardware and stated in bold at the beginning of this section, “We have not confirmed any instances of Vanguard hardware bricking,” encouraging those experiencing such issues to seek player support. The company also identified and issued recommendations on how to change BIOS settings to resolve the issue, and said to contact Gamer Support if (you guessed it) the issue persists.
As for the screenshot issue, Riot stresses that Vanguard only takes photos of your game client, not your monitor or other tabs. Now, this won’t do much for those who have fundamental issues with the software taking unauthorized screenshots, but Riot says its software complies with privacy laws in different regions and is safe to use.
So you can see how this turned into a complete meltdown. The practice of using kernel-level anti-cheat is becoming increasingly popular among developers because it becomes increasingly difficult to cheat via systems with such entrenched hardware access. However, as the tide changes, many players who don’t cheat are also caught in the crossfire. This is inevitable. Those with weaker systems, those with older operating systems, those who modded skins to make Gragas look like Shrek. Riot and other developers appear to have accepted the loss of this group of players in order to protect the greater collective player experience. It’s a tough trade-off, to be sure.
One could argue that Riot gave players enough time to learn about their hardware before implementing Vanguard. The news was first announced four months ago. But I would say that’s a hard thing to expect for the aforementioned players. Sure, custom skin users can say goodbye to Michael Jackson Talon, but if you ask the average league player what UEFI or TPM2.0 is, you’ll probably say Latin.
For those of you having no issues, Vanguard is up and running. Detect cheaters, end ranked games without losing ranking points to either side, and hopefully make the game less viable for those who make such illegal software. One can only hope that Riot’s estimate of the number of players negatively affected by Vanguard is accurate, and that these folks can address the issue quickly. Time will tell if this is good for the game as a whole, or if Riot is just doing nothing to frustrate a large portion of its players.
