League of Legends is getting Valorant's always-on Vanguard anti-cheat software

Jan. 5, 2024

Controversial at launch, Vanguard has become a core part of the Valorant ecosystem

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Vanguard, the initially controversial anti-cheat software attached to Valorant, is coming to League of Legends.

Vanguard seems to have been pretty effective - I’m not a regular Valorant player, but while I don’t imagine there’s no cheating whatsoever in Riot’s tactical shooter, it’s rare - if ever - that I get to hear about it. That’s likely because of the greatest controversy around Vanguard at launch: the fact that it’s always on.

Vanguard runs in the background, booting up with your PC and working constantly - the Vanguard client tackles in-game cheater, but the ‘kernel-mode’ driver behind it is at work whenever your PC is on. The idea is that the anti-cheat will assess other programs on your PC, blocking them if they have a known vulnerability that could mess with its active anti-cheat systems. If you don’t let Vanguard start up at the same time as Windows, then it won’t trust your PC, and you won’t be able to play Valorant, or, now, League of Legends.

This “forbidden” League of Legends build infinitely buffs almost every stat in the game, and it’s probably going away forever next month.

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I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.

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