VALORANT is becoming a phenomenon in the gaming world amid a market crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, in recent days, this game and Riot Games have become the “hated villains” in the eyes of the gaming community, due to the “suspicious” issues arising from its anti-cheat system – Vanguard Anti-Cheat.
Specifically, a player with the nickname redbedbeard posted a lengthy article on the VALORANT subreddit, sharing that Vanguard Anti-Cheat – the game’s anti-hack application – always runs in the background when starting the PC, causing FPS drops when playing certain “directly competitive” games with Riot Games products, specifically CS:GO and DOTA 2.
Additionally, another player discovered that Vanguard Anti-Cheat runs on your computer regardless of whether VALORANT is open or not, and even in the case of being deleted, it will automatically reinstall itself if the player launches the game.
More dangerously, Vanguard also runs on the computer with Admin rights, meaning it has the capability to silently collect all user data.
What’s more concerning is Riot’s reaction when the issue was uncovered. The post by redbedbeard on the VALORANT subreddit was removed by Riot. Meanwhile, one of Riot’s leaders – RiotArkem – stated that the reason for Vanguard’s features is: “We want to ensure the game’s security mechanisms as comprehensively as possible.” and “The background running mechanism when starting the PC allows us to control hack instances before entering the game.”
At the same time, Riot Games also committed to adjusting the features of Vanguard Anti-Cheat, adding some mechanisms as per players’ requests, such as fixing the “bug” that causes FPS drops in games from other developers, or allowing players to permanently uninstall the application, while also assuring that there will be no cases of user data theft.
However, this belated promise seems to leave the gaming community unsatisfied, especially the CS:GO community and fans of other shooting games – players who were initially interested in trying out VALORANT and had given some positive feedback, now harbor a lasting resentment towards this game.
Riot Games can explain that VALORANT is in its Beta phase, so it is hard to avoid issues like this, but the act of deleting related posts by the VALORANT subreddit administrators – which was created by Riot itself – has left a very negative impression on the international gaming community.