Riot, the gaming giant behind “Valorant” and “League of Legends,” clarified in an article on X that its Vanguard anti-cheat does not destroy PCs. Rumors began to circulate that he was sharing a photo of various hardware devices on As a result, the community quickly began to question whether Riot could actually destroy PCs.
Riot quickly squashed the rumors by confirming that Vanguard cannot damage hardware or disable devices. The creators of “League of Legends” (which remains one of the best free games to this day) further clarified that the photo showed devices sold for cheating in its game “Valorant”, which are now practically useless. In other words, the updated Vanguard anti-cheat software blocks cheat devices, so any attempt to use them for their intended purpose could lead to hardware problems.
According to Riot, the devices themselves remain functional after disabling security features like IOMMU. However, since these are now essential to run the Riot Games software, cheaters are forced to give up. The company further reiterated its commitment to protecting the transparency and integrity of games by investing in additional anti-cheat protocols, assuring players that this only affects those using cheating hardware configurations.
How does Riot’s Vanguard work?
Of course, Riot isn’t the first company to implement anti-cheat measures in its competitive games. For example, the team behind “Call of Duty” once deployed a system that made legitimate players invisible to cheaters. What Vanguard lacks in surface-level originality, it offers a wealth of effectiveness. In fact, it’s so powerful that the system has prevented 3.6 million cheaters in the four years since it ran in “Valorant.” Vanguard’s kernel mode driver always runs in the background and monitors the system. At the same time, another client is there to spring into action when players launch a Riot game.
However, cheaters always find a solution. As a result, DMA tricks have become very popular due to their ability to bypass software protections by implementing external hardware that can directly access memory. This is exactly why Riot forced the update on accounts that were deploying DMA devices, and therefore why they made the “clipboard” comment.
Ultimately, the rumor that Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheat software was breaking PCs was just a case of a misinterpreted joke. The company threw further shade at cheaters, assuring them that their DMA devices will continue to work in other games. Riot went so far as to ask them to disable IOMMU in the BIOS to make the device ready to cheat again, but stressed that they simply couldn’t continue using the hardware for “Valorant” matches.
