Valorant to use unique anti-cheat, new Vanguard system to fight hacks

Steven Rondina Published 09/03/2020

Cheaters are an unfortunately normal part of the online gaming experience. Whether it’s map hackers or aim bots, people find ways to get an unfair advantage over the competition and it’s the game’s publishers who are the ones tasked with combating this.

Riot Games’ Valorant will have very different concerns on this front than its first title, League of Legends. With that in mind, the company is working on its own new anti-cheat engine, Vanguard. Alongside this are built-in mechanisms designed to combat some common hacking methods.

There are many different hacking methods that will be combated in different ways. Here are some of the most common, and how they will be dealt with.

Speed hacks, teleportation will be impossible in Valorant

Speed hacks have fallen out of style, but they’re a classic in shooting games. Just as the name would suggest, they allow the user to move faster than what should normally be present in the game. These have generally had varying levels of usefulness depending on the game, but have the potential to be game-changing in titles like Team Fortress 2.

Valorant plans to combat this with server authority, effectively preventing players from influencing their location during games. This will also prevent teleportation hacks, which function in similar ways.

This should be a relief to players looking forward to Valorant, as hero shooters have traditionally used movement speed as a critical part of balancing different characters and their ability kits.

Valorant should prevent wallhacks with fog of war system

Wallhacks are the bane of tactical shooters. Counter-Strike is a game that tasks players to make crucial decisions with limited information and when players artificially have more information than their opponents through things like wallhacks, it ruins the experience.

Valorant will have a unique way of combating wallhacks, with an in-engine fog of war system that will functionally remove opponents from existence until right before contact. This should prevent wallhacks, which use various methods to detect and identify the locations of enemies despite visual obstacles, from functioning properly.

This is an interesting way of tackling this issue and one that would be effective if executed properly. The only question is how Riot can pull this off without potential stutters or dips in performance when players are rapidlyl moving in and out of sight.

Vanguard anti-cheat system will fill in the other gaps

No wall hacks, teleportation bugs, or speed hacks sounds great, but what about trigger bots? Aim locks? Lag switches?

Filling in those gaps is a new anti-cheat engine called Vanguard. Riot has not opened up on Vanguard too much, but has stated it will have “consistently evolving detection methods” that will allow the company to swiftly ban hackers.

There have been some concerns regarding the capabilities of Valorant’s anti-cheat system, with some speculating that Riot’s anti-cheat methods will give the company deep access to users’ systems. This is worrying given how some regions have experienced security issues with Riot’s games in the past.

Still, Riot is putting a lot of effort into ensuring the Valorant experience is a clean one.

Steven Rondina

About Steven Rondina

Steven Rondina is a true lifelong gamer. His earliest memories are of playing video games, and he has continued playing them throughout his life with no plans to stop any time soon. Steven’s favorite franchises in gaming include Pokemon, Dark Souls, and Counter-Strike. He has previously published with Bleacher Report and other gaming outlets.

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