As part of Riot Games’ plans to bring VALORANT to PS5 and Xbox, the developer has revealed that it is adjusting its internal anti-cheat system, Vanguard, in order to maintain the competitive integrity of the tactical FPS on consoles.
VALORANT's Always-On Anti-Cheat: Vanguard – Should You Be Worried?
Vanguard is Riot Games’ anti-cheat software for VALORANT, and since April, for League of Legends. Since its implementation in 2020, Vanguard has been instrumental in detecting and preventing cheating, and has helped keep VALORANT largely free of misconduct.
“We take competitive integrity seriously and are committed to delivering a best-in-class technical experience for FPS players across all platforms,” the game’s production director Arnar Gylfason told Dot Esports. Gylfason also shared that Riot is working on adapting “several” features of Vanguard for the console version of VALORANT, including anomalous input device detection.
Other anti-cheat systems used in console FPS games serve similar functions to Vanguard in detecting and preventing cheating. Systems like Ricochet in Call of Duty: Warzone and BattlEye in Rainbow Six Siege use kernel-level drivers for in-depth system monitoring, while Easy Anti-Cheat, used in Apex Legends and Fortnite, combines user-level and kernel-level components. Like Vanguard, all of these systems are regularly updated to remain effective against new methods of cheating.
