Inside Riot’s High-Tech War on Video Game Cheaters
- Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheat system has reduced cheating in Valorant ranked matches to under 1% globally.
- The anti-cheat team combines technical tools, undercover operations, and psychological tactics to fight cheaters and cheat developers.
- Despite privacy concerns, Riot insists deep system access is essential for maintaining a fair and competitive gaming environment.
Cheating has plagued video games for decades, but the stakes have never been higher than in today’s world of professional and competitive gaming.
As the industry around cheat development has grown more sophisticated and lucrative, game developers like Riot Games have been forced to escalate their defences.
At the heart of Riot’s anti-cheat arsenal is Vanguard, a controversial but highly effective kernel-level system that gives Riot deep access to player machines to root out cheaters.
Vanguard leverages advanced security features built into Windows, such as Trusted Platform Module and Secure Boot, to detect tampering and block unauthorised hardware drivers that could facilitate cheating.
It also prevents cheats from executing code at the kernel level, making it much harder for hackers to stay hidden.
Thanks to these efforts, Riot now bans thousands of cheaters from Valorant every day, and as of early 2025, less than 1% of ranked Valorant matches globally involve cheaters dramatic improvement for the competitive scene.
But Riot’s fight isn’t just technical. The anti-cheat team, led by Phillip Koskinas, runs undercover operations, infiltrating cheat-developer communities with fake identities to gather intelligence and even sabotage cheat launches.
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They publicly discredit cheat makers by banning all their users at once or leaking evidence of their infiltration, sabotaging the reputation of “premium” cheats that sell for thousands of dollars.
Riot also employs psychological tactics, sometimes trolling cheaters and slowing down ban waves to prevent the rapid evolution of undetectable cheats.
For persistent offenders, Vanguard fingerprints hardware to block repeat cheaters from simply creating new accounts.
Despite privacy concerns over Vanguard’s deep system access, Riot maintains that such measures are necessary to maintain fair play. The company has increased transparency around its methods, aiming to justify the trade-off to its player base.
As cheat developers turn to ever more advanced tactics-including hardware-based and AI-driven cheats-Riot’s anti-cheat team continues to adapt, ensuring that the war against cheaters remains an ongoing, high-stakes arms race.
Edited By Annette George
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