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If you like esports you probably hate cheaters, it’s just that simple.
So when Riot unveiled Valorant, they did it with the promise of stopping hackers in their tracks.
But, it comes at a major cost. An intrusive piece of anti-cheat software called Vanguard that constantly runs on your computer.
So what’s the deal with this thing? Is it a breach of privacy or is this just what it takes to catch cheaters?
Let us give you the real answers.
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Written and Hosted by: Keith Capstick (@keithcapstick)
Edited by: Matthew Massey
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39 comments
If you're not a cheater, you shouldn't have a problem with it. At least I don't.
say some information is stolen could you sue roit games
I can almost smell the incoming virtual machines…
So ive bought cheats for 9€ per day and im still not banned. Theres Something wrong with that anti cheat. Maybe it has to be invasive to catch cheaters but then it should atleast catch them…
Yeah it catches cheaters, because it has kernal level access. If you watch someone constantly, of course you're gonna catch them misbehaving. This doesn't stop users playing on a virtual machine anyway, AKA anyone on linux who wants to play the game. This is the worst idea for an anticheat I've ever seen. Thanks Tencent.
I'll admit, Riot is making me proud. A good MOBA, a good card game, and now a good FPS, with the rise of a fighting game coming in……damn Riot, you going in hard.
Wow this video upsets me so hard it's insane how you are selling this like it's okay from riot games to install you a backdoor. And these "experts" must really support riot and their game valorant, because they didnt tell how unnecessarily dangerous this anti cheat can be. And if you didnt inform yourself about this whole thing and you just want to play it once a week or month, then you probably wouldn't want that riot and tencent could collect all your data without you even knowing, so riot doesnt inform the consumer enough imo :// and pls change your title because this "real" triggers me so much because in this video there are some important things missing :/ but you still act like everthing that needs to be said is already said
So he says anti-cheat needs to be intrusive if it's going to work but Valorant's anti-cheat doesn't seem to be working any better than other anti-cheat with less access to your computer
Someordinarygamers already did this
Cheesy sponsor by the way
Yo don’t copy SomeOrdinaryGames
It won't be a problem if it ran locally but I didn't hear anywhere the fact that it also connects to the Internet and sends data about your game. An exploit could be used to get out other type of data from your computer by China or some other 3rd party. Comparing it to your keyboard is beyond childish.
Guys no ofense. I'm happy that you get sponsors but this ad is too long and too shitty
Valorant vanguard be like:
Hippety hoppety ur computer is now my property
Pretty much from what I have seen from this is that anyone who knows anything about cheating and anti cheats are like "Oh sick. Good guy Riot". All the people that don't know shit about anything are like "Ummmm Riot is owned by tencent so they are going to hack my ass all the way to mars and delete all of my hentai" They are all conspiracy theory Andy's
"We wanted to learn if it was wrong to go the extra mile to catch cheaters. So we asked someone who's entire thing is to go the extra mile to catch cheaters…"
Act more confident while presenting the sponsor!
Am I the only one who got frame drops because of anti cheat? Even if I have mid rig PC (i5-3470, RX 560) I got framedrops like I have pentium..
Battle eye is good anti cheat barely any cheater they dont break any privacy this valorant anti cheat will get into trouble with EU country very soon and USA too
The question is, if it really takes the performence out of your computer, idc if anyone is spying on me, but if it should slow down other games, i would not be happy, even tho ive been playing since the second stream drops, and havent noticed computer getting slowed or anything
Riot gonna have a wicked porn collection
Untill they change the anti cheat not downloading this shit tancent China nope not gonna happen
Sorry man but this video has so much crap in it. I get that nobody likes cheaters, but being like o other company's are doing it and it's the only way is a stupid way to think. If there ever comes a exploit of vanguard or if somebody with bad intent manages te break it all the players are basically in big big big trouble because these people now can do everything on your computer because they now have the highest acces. And not to be like spooky scary china land but i don't trust companies that are linked to a country where at any point they have to hand over all of their data to the government without a warrant or international law holding them back, especially because again they can do anything with kernel acces.
Look in to the whole Zoom crisis, this is has the same danger in being linked to china and this is even worse because where zoom created a huge backdoor, vanguard literally has the keys to everything on your computer, and I get that this is more secure than zoom but on the other hand if you ask zoom their super save!!! So of course Riot is not going to say it's not save XD
But yeah man, having a few less cheaters is totally worth all these risks and giving up all your privacy!!!!!
That grubhub advertising was kinda cringe ngl.
In the thumbnail I see there is a breach in the code
I feel fine about this.
the real story, provided by two unknown experts that don't seem like experts to me at all. this video is completely missing the point of why people dislike the anti cheat, nor does it tell us anything regarding our privacy concerns. It also doesn't properly explain why ring0 acces and continously running is the only way to catch cheaters. This video wasnt more informative than a random reddit comment.
Just saying "because cheats use kernel, you have to as well & its basically industry standard" doesnt explain anything, nor is it a good argument. I'm sure there are other ways of combatting cheaters than having a very intrusive anti cheat that can't be turned off(such as reporting cheaters, after which their gameplay will scanned by deep learning ai for inhuman movement) and you haven't even tried to look into those. Maybe ask real security experts and possibly cheat coders in the future if you want to learn us something, instead of acting like the only way to prevent cheaters is to give up all your privacy. I also saw a comment that had the idea of having to restart your pc for vanguard to turn on, on which itll work on kernel level. This seems like a good way to be able to have vanguard off when you're not playing, but still having it on at ring 0 level when you do want to play.
It would also have been great if you had interviewed riot and asked how our privacy is affected by vanguard. For example: will it take screenshots sporadically? Will it save which sites I visit and all of my chatlogs on whatsapp, steam etc? What kind of information does it acces and store? And if they do, how long will these things be stored? How can we ask riot to remove our private information etc. What kind of administrative rights does the anti cheat have? I remember how the in 2015 introduced new ESEA anti cheat client gave admins the right to download or upload anything to and from your pc as they pleased according to their ToS. I've stopped using ESEA since.
This is bad journalism and doesn't seem more than a bad take from a random person that has no clue about the subject to me. Thanks for nothing.
Aahhhhh keith got them J's thooo
That word intrusive does make me flinch. But so long as a small selection of people keep ruining it for everyone else, you either stick to SP or you be intruded upon! Better than a poke in the eye with a rubber chicken i suppose (or dealing with hackers)!😂
Fun fact theres no chance riot can get personal data since 1st the actuall client tests only valorant related data and btw on terms of use and privacy theres no notes on personal data and even if riot stile data you could sue them
So a Chinese-based company with close ties to the Chinese government installing kernel-level software capable of being breached? No thanks
Easy bypass to this is to grab cheats then install game. May be wrong but it seems like the best way to do this
I'd rather cheaters in my games than spyware in my system.
Here's the thing. I don't expect Riot or even Tencent to care enough about what's on my PC to abuse having kernal-level access to my system. What I'm concerned about is if the security of Valorant's anticheat ever gets compromised, suddenly a hacker (and I'm talking an ACTUAL hacker, not a script kiddie who can see through walls in a video game) has a free backdoor into not only my PC, but the PCs of everyone who installed Valorant.
Unless Riot's back-end programmers are the perfect gods of coding to the point where their system is 100% airtight (something which nobody has ever been able to do btw), there's always that risk that any PC with this software could be broken into. Until Riot makes it so their anticheat doesn't need to basically be a system admin on my PC, I'm not putting that shit on my computer. I get that cheaters need to be shut down, but no fucking way am I trusting Riot and Tencent with my PC.
3:50 this is blatantly not true. Fortnite and Overwatch have great anti-cheat and it doesn't need to be constantly running.
9:50 but they are the only ones being this intrusive?
Would i risk myself installing a backdoor software for company with shady investor for maybe 5% chance of meeting a cheater ? Nah i'm good
Wait till cheats move to hardware… Good luck stopping them then.
One FPGA to monitor all network traffic to your pc, it also has your mouse and keyboard connected.
It reads the network code, applies cheats to your mouse and keyboard inputs and sends it to the pc.
No way for the PC to detect.
Oh and USB VID and PID are freaking easy to fake so yeah it can look exactly like your mouse /keyboard to the PC.
For me its not the intrusive AC that bothers me its the affiliation with riot and the chineese government
sponsored by riot
overwatch pd cringe