[STEAM] Riot Games denies claims of Vanguard bricking PCs

[Steam 0]

Earlier today, Valorant players accused Vanguard, Riot Games’ anti-cheat software, of going full malware, allegedly bricking PCs. Things didn’t get better as Riot seemingly owned up to it by making jokes at the expense of players, but it seems like it was no more than a tone-deaf joke.

It all began when

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user ogisada gathered various photos, seemingly proving how Vanguard was triggering an in-game response that rendered players’ PCs unusable, whether or not they were playing the game. Riot’s official X account responded not by explaining that Vanguard wasn’t, in fact, bricking systems, but by releasing an image of a bunch of supposedly bricked graphics cards, joking that many players were now in possession of $6k paperweights.

congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight

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— Riot Games (@riotgames)

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Naturally, that didn’t sit well with gamers. The pressure got Riot to finally reply as it should have in the first place, explaining that, among other things, those aren’t graphics cards. Those are photos of a rather specific piece of hardware used solely to cheat in Valorant.

As per Riot, the only people complaining that their hardware got bricked were cheaters, but Vanguard doesn’t actually brick their computers.

“If a cheat setup continues attempting to cheat after those protections are enabled, the system may generate hardware faults or instability,” Riot wrote. “This is expected behavior under IOMMU when attempts are made to read protected memory. Disabling IOMMU allows the cheat device to function again, but IOMMU will still be required to play our games. This means the cheat device won’t work with our games, but your PC isn’t ‘bricked.’ We would not, and cannot, impact your PC’s functionality in any other fashion. This functionality only applies to systems attempting to use DMA cheat devices, and players who are not using DMA-based cheat setups are not affected.”

X users were already talking about a possible class action lawsuit, which might’ve been the main reason that got Riot to clarify things. Either way, Vanguard will likely remain both in operation and hated by about anyone who’s ever interacted with any game by Riot.

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