Valorant's Anti Cheat Runs on System Startup

System

Valorant's Anti Cheat Runs on System Startup

Riot has provided some details on the anti-cheat system for Valorant, and apparently, it starts with system bootup.

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niceguy3978

I may be missing something, but if you can uninstall it at anytime, how will it prevent cheating? Or are they saying that if you decide to uninstall the game, then you can uninstall the program, and if that is the case...duh?

Asheram

I want to try this game but not going to have a process run when the game isnt running.

alloin

I can only applaud their efforts, hope it will be as effective as they want it to be

alkarionlog

yeah pretty sure batlefield had this, didn't work, if I remember well they make a fake driver, so when you try to run the game he belive the anticheat is there, but its the the cheat already

Panther2103

I see this blowing up in a lot of places. Not sure if it affects performance or anything. I have played quite a bit of Valorant and a few other games since I've installed it but haven't really noticed anything. A little frustrating it isn't just running when the game runs though.

QQMorePlease

niceguy3978 said:

I may be missing something, but if you can uninstall it at anytime, how will it prevent cheating? Or are they saying that if you decide to uninstall the game, then you can uninstall the program, and if that is the case...duh?

Pretty much cant play the game without the driver active.

Ginaz

niceguy3978 said:

I may be missing something, but if you can uninstall it at anytime, how will it prevent cheating? Or are they saying that if you decide to uninstall the game, then you can uninstall the program, and if that is the case...duh?

I read a bit of it and what it looks like is you can uninstall Vanguard after you finish playing Valorant. If you you want to play again, the launcher will reinstall it again and ask you to restart your PC before playing. It's a bit cumbersome but it is possible to have it running only when you are playing the game. What Vanguard does to your PC while your playing is the big question.

Iselin

DMKano said:

Yeah no thanks.

No game is worth this.

Hard pass.

Agree, I don't really want to play any game that needs this level of anti-cheat intrusive Windows processes.

ChildoftheShadows

Zegaloth said:

DMKano said:

Yeah no thanks.



No game is worth this.



Hard pass.

I agree. I was excited to try it out until the news broke. I don't trust Riot, or Tencent to have backdoor access to my computer.

It doesn't even work. It's been about a week and already they have had ban waves for cheaters.

That’s how you know it’s working. 

Asm0deus

Yeah no thanks, this is just begging for abuse on riot/tencent's part.

Sandmanjw

ChildoftheShadows said:

Zegaloth said:

DMKano said:

Yeah no thanks.



No game is worth this.



Hard pass.

I agree. I was excited to try it out until the news broke. I don't trust Riot, or Tencent to have backdoor access to my computer.

It doesn't even work. It's been about a week and already they have had ban waves for cheaters.

That’s how you know it’s working. 

No, anti cheat programs and ban waves by dev's are very different things.

One. the anti cheat  program is supposed to stop people from messing with the code.

The bans waves are on people that have clearly found ways AROUND the anti cheat program to change code, or way to cheat in a game...

Jaguaratron1

They never learn do they? This kind of intrusive, deep buried rootkit never goes down well regardless of how the developers say "oh its cool, really, trust us".

Kumapon

The problem with their entire logic is it boils down to....

"Don't worry just trust us"

Yeah. No. How do we know you aren't going to "accidentally" enable backdoor features and start sending data back to China.

Or it's not always about what the developer does with the file but what others could do with it.

MMORPGtester

mmm rootkits, and apparently only way into there beta is to watch someone already playing on twitch, no rootkits for me and no more twitch, uninstalled twitch and league of legends. Give them a hand and they WILL take your arm and maybe even your leg.

TacticalZombeh

A little deeper insight (can't get much lighter than this 'article') provided by Bellular News:

srbenga23

if u want ur game to be hack free u better start streaming it like Google stadia or GeForce Now, any other option will result in hacks, have been this way since ever and will be this way forever,

ChildoftheShadows

Sandmanjw said:

ChildoftheShadows said:

Zegaloth said:

DMKano said:

Yeah no thanks.



No game is worth this.



Hard pass.

I agree. I was excited to try it out until the news broke. I don't trust Riot, or Tencent to have backdoor access to my computer.

It doesn't even work. It's been about a week and already they have had ban waves for cheaters.

That’s how you know it’s working. 

No, anti cheat programs and ban waves by dev's are very different things.

One. the anti cheat  program is supposed to stop people from messing with the code.

The bans waves are on people that have clearly found ways AROUND the anti cheat program to change code, or way to cheat in a game...

Actually. Not really. Most public cheats can be detected immediately and issue a ban, if the devs want it to. Non public cheats cannot and typically just flag players and reviewed later. Hence the waves. 

hfztt

srbenga23 said:

if u want ur game to be hack free u better start streaming it like Google stadia or GeForce Now, any other option will result in hacks, have been this way since ever and will be this way forever,

I am pretty sure that creating an Aim-bot using Machine Learning on the pure video stream from Stadia is absolutely doable...

Wont help.

Lobotomist

Same here. Tencent installing RootKit on my PC, and giving pinky promise it will not collect my data.

Hard pass.

jelliuz

Doesn't matter, the game is pretty much boring anyway, LIDL CS:GO is exactly what it should be called.
It stunk the first day it came on the market, hundreds of thousands of bots on twitch were pushing it creating fake hype while most chats were abundantly negative about it... The whole key drop thing they pushed in cooperation with twitch, the gigantic bounty payments to streamers that decide to play it all day...

If your game needs guerilla marketing tactics to make it, something is wrong.

kitarad

No way I want that on my system at startup, hell no! Doom the  game.

Margrave

And just like that, this game was made to where I will never install it.

BrotherMaynard

Looks like somebody at Riot hired the Sony SecuROM guy. What a steal!

BrotherMaynard

jelliuz said:

Doesn't matter, the game is pretty much boring anyway, LIDL CS:GO is exactly what it should be called.

It does matter. That's why they test it on this one and not on LoL. That's the only proper way to ban boil a frog. Once the critical mass of their users is so used to it they will at best go 'meh' with any such news, then you deploy it large scale.

In other words, it's less about what is now and more about where this is headed.

ChildoftheShadows

Zegaloth said:

ChildoftheShadows said:

Sandmanjw said:

ChildoftheShadows said:

Zegaloth said:

DMKano said:

Yeah no thanks.





No game is worth this.





Hard pass.

I agree. I was excited to try it out until the news broke. I don't trust Riot, or Tencent to have backdoor access to my computer.



It doesn't even work. It's been about a week and already they have had ban waves for cheaters.

That’s how you know it’s working. 

No, anti cheat programs and ban waves by dev's are very different things.

One. the anti cheat  program is supposed to stop people from messing with the code.

The bans waves are on people that have clearly found ways AROUND the anti cheat program to change code, or way to cheat in a game...

Actually. Not really. Most public cheats can be detected immediately and issue a ban, if the devs want it to. Non public cheats cannot and typically just flag players and reviewed later. Hence the waves. 

...

If you want to give up even more of your cyber security, go for it. Just don't drag anyone else down with your whataboutisms.

You ok, bro? I’m not sure where this came  from or what “whataboutism” you’re referring to (there wasn’t one) I’m simply giving an idea for how these things work. What you do with that is up to you. 

They’ll likely argue that they are doing it to improve their anti cheat. Something that’s been growing lately is the use of image and pixel detection to create aim bots that don’t require any injections into the game . This makes it impossible for the game to detect the software itself so they try it at a system level instead. Their thought process for doing it at startup is probably that they can detect anything that you run after the fact rather than trying to detect what you run before the anti cheat is started. 

One, it’s probably a thin line of legality that we should be looking into. Two, it’s futile. Anyone wanting to cheat will find a way around it and developers need to find other means to detect cheating that isn’t intrusive in any way (possible just more challenging)

 I’m not installing this garbage and would encourage everyone else to do the same to show these companies we won’t put up with it, but knowing how these things work will get you a lot farther in the argument.