Valorant, Riot Games' class-based tactical shooter, is gaining in popularity – but fans have had questions about the company's anti-cheat measures.
That's because even when you aren't playing the game, the software begins running on your computer. Thankfully, Riot's Paul Chamberlain has been discussing the system on Reddit.
Valorant Anti-Cheat System Explained
According to Chamberlain, "Vanguard contains a driver component called vgk.sys (similar to other anti-cheat systems), it's the reason why a reboot is required after installing. Vanguard doesn't consider the computer trusted unless the Vanguard driver is loaded at system startup (this part is less common for anti-cheat systems),"
“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,” he added. “Running the driver at system startup time makes this significantly more difficult.”
Despite the system running while your PC is on, it “does not collect or send any information about your computer back to us. Any cheat detection scans will be run by the non-driver component only when the game is running.”
In layman's terms, it simply activates when the game does. It's a tricky conversation to have, but we're glad Riot has attempted to get out in front of what could otherwise be a PR nightmare.