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Players raise concerns over the ‘invasive’ Valorant Anti Cheat

It all started with a Reddit post where the user found out that the Valorant Anti Cheat, Vanguard, would start up on computer boot.

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Rudraaksh Bhatyal
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If there was one thing Riot was proud about in regards to Valorant, it was its anti cheat. But it seems like things haven’t turned out the was Riot wanted them to. First, there were Day 0 cheats in Valorant, which Riot initially denied. Now, players have found that Vanguard, the Valorant Anti Cheat, is highly “invasive”. 

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It all started with a Reddit post where the user found out that the Valorant Anti Cheat, Vanguard, would start up on computer boot. This raised a few flags because not a lot of anti cheats like BattleEye and Easy Anti Cheat do this.  

Anticheat starts upon computer boot from r/VALORANT

This post received a lot of upvotes, and Paul Chamberlain, the anti cheat lead at Riot, responded, saying this was intended and made it “significantly difficult” for cheats to tamper with the anti cheat. He also explained that Vanguard does not scan your computer if Valorant isn’t running. 

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Another user explained that Anti Cheats, by their nature, are supposed to be invasive to remain effective. 

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But it seems like this isn’t where things end. A few users reported that Vanguard has root level access to the PC. Even though Chamberlain replied that they had already written and article about it, a few weren’t convinced regarding their intentions because some claimed that the article downplayed the situation and others said that it is not an easy article to find. 

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If you ask me, I feel the anti cheat is invasive, and I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if there were no Day 0 cheats. That puts Vanguard’s effectiveness into question. What do you guys think? 

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