Last week, Riot Games unveiled that their in-development competitive FPS Valorant runs an anti-cheat process in the background of player systems, which caused no small measure of community discussion, both against and for the decision. As a result, Riot has posted a dev blog that both seeks to defend the decision to have a driver and extends a $100,000 challenge to anyone who exploits it.
The post first elaborates on just what Vanguard does from a nuts-and-bolts perspective, explaining once more that Vanguard can be removed from a system but will effectively halt Valorant from running. It then defends Vanguard, once again repeating that it does not collect personal information and send it anywhere and that it has passed certification.
In fact, Riot seems so sure that Vanguard is an effective and safe anti-cheat process that it’s offering a bounty on HackerOne of up to $100,000 for “high quality reports that demonstrate practical exploits leveraging the Vanguard kernel driver.”
Making Valorant a fair and safe playing environment has been on the forefront of Riot’s mind, as it has not only discussed the Vanguard driver but additional measures like the Fog of War wallhack protection. The developer is adamant in its ability to stop cheating and maintain its “player-focused culture.” In fact, Riot goes so far as to encourage players to hold its feet to that fire:
“We’d never let Riot ship something we couldn’t stand behind from a player-trust perspective. Players have every right to question and challenge us, but let’s be clear — we wouldn’t work here if we didn’t deeply care about player trust and privacy and believe that Riot feels the same way. We’re players just like you, and we wouldn’t install programs on our computer that we didn’t have the utmost confidence in.
“Please keep holding us accountable for protecting both the competitive integrity of your games and your personal privacy.”
