Riot Games Denies Vanguard Anti-Cheat Damages Hardware After User Backlash
The statement directly addresses a rare public backlash over anti-cheat aggressiveness, forcing Riot to distinguish between disabling cheating peripherals and harming legitimate hardware.
Reporting from 1 sources: Game Spark.
Riot Games clarified on May 23 that its latest Vanguard update for VALORANT does not damage PC hardware or disable devices, after a May 22 post joking about cheating devices becoming paperweights sparked concerns that the anti-cheat could permanently destroy SATA/NVMe firmware.
Riot Games posted a supplementary explanation on its official X account on May 23, responding to concerns that the latest Vanguard anti-cheat update could permanently damage PC hardware. The company's May 22 post, which showed a pile of devices with the caption 'Congratulations to the owners of the latest $6,000 paperweight,' was meant to celebrate blocking DMA cheating devices, but a quoted user message warning that triggering the anti-cheat would destroy SATA/NVMe firmware caused alarm. Commenters asked whether Riot had the right to disable users' PCs entirely. In its follow-up, Riot acknowledged that 'the situation escalated quickly' and stated explicitly that Vanguard 'does not damage hardware or disable devices.' The company explained that the devices in the image were sold specifically as cheating tools for VALORANT, not normal PC parts, and that the update only disables those devices. Attempting to keep using a blocked cheating device may cause instability, but that affects the cheating device, not the user's PC. Players who do not use DMA cheating devices are not affected.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.