Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.
Summary:
The article discusses Riot Games’ requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users’ devices.
The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players’ activity and restricting free speech in-game.
Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.
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Kernal level anti-cheat means I ain’t gonna play it
I don’t care where the company is based no game should be requiring kernal level access, that’s just opening the door for security concerns
Good cheat prevention needs to be part of the game’s fundamental design, not some virus as a band-aid.
While I do agree with you, some cheats manipulate the memory itself so you would need some elevated privilages to dectect them as the cheats themsevles run with these privileges
Can you name one of those games that have no anticheat and also no cheaters?
Anti cheat as a fundamental design does not necessarily mean no anti cheat.
I’m wondering if there’s a way we can even know they’re installing it. Windows just gives that generic admin prompt, I imagine? Tells you nothing of what’s happening.
Well if you get asked for sudo, then that’s a risk.
This won’t change much for me considering i already have a dozen reasons not to play this shit ass game
Nope. Take your rootkit and go fuck yourself with it.
There’s absolutely 0 reason a game should ever have kernel access. Ie unrestricted access to every piece of data on the system.
We totally won’t harvest your data.
Ignore the fact that we have political, state, and financial interest to do so, and that you would have no way of verifying or detecting if we did harvest your data, but you can trust us.
Just trust us.
It’s not only interests of the chinese government, they HAVE to oblige legally if they are asked to. So even if the company has the best intentions, the government overrules.
And don’t make that a chinese bad guy argument, as if western companies aren’t doing the same, they just don’t do that officially, which one is shadier is yours to decide.
All you can do as a company or anyone is to stop harvesting data and don’t plant blackboxes/backdoors in customers systems
Edward Snowden showed that the US is spying on their citicens but nobody seems to care. But when China is doing it, everybody seems to lose their mind.
I don’t get why they are so afraid of spyware from a country they don’t even live in, it’s the US that can prosecute you for anything they don’t like on your computer.
If you ask me, it’s best to treat any program requiring kernel level access that isn’t part of your base operating system or something you created and have full control over as malware. All it takes is one exploit or something of similar nature and some bad actors taking advantage of it before it can be patched for your computer to become fucked.
What could go wrong with chinese rootkits on leading global games?
By the replies, I almost assumed this was 4-chan. It’s either some bold bravado, or generic out of touch shaming people foe allowing kernel level access.
There are interesting conversations to be had around this topic. For example, Riot in the article rises the following points, can we address those?
Cheat software developers are already releasing cheats that operate at this level. If Riot wants to combat them, it has to do so at the kernel level.
Lots of other companies are already using similar software to prevent cheating.
“This isn’t giving us any surveillance capability we didn’t already have.” Claiming that if they wanted to steal data, their example being a secret recipe, then they could already do so in user mode.
Cheat software developers are already releasing cheats that operate at this level. If Riot wants to combat them, it has to do so at the kernel level.
and what is their endgame? “Developers are releasing cheats that emualate a mouse. Therefore Riot needs to use a camera to record your hand”?
Lots of other companies are already using similar software to prevent cheating.
If everybody is jumping off a roof, so should Riot?
“This isn’t giving us any surveillance capability we didn’t already have.” Claiming that if they wanted to steal data, their example being a secret recipe, then they could already do so in user mode.
Isn’t the whole point of anti-cheat to survey the computer? If you aren’t getting anything new, then why even use a kernel-level anticheat?
“Developers are releasing cheats that emualate a mouse. Therefore Riot needs to use a camera to record your hand”?
The most basic form of anticheat already spots this.
You are so far in the past it’s clear why you don’t understand it.
I think the main issue here (I haven’t seen it mentioned in the top comments) is that LoL doesn’t even have a cheating problem honestly. I’ve been playing since 2014, off and on, and I think I might have met maybe one scripter (I’m not really sure). Lol has definitely a toxicity problem, but I honestly don’t think it has ever had a scripters/cheaters problem, so I really don’t understand this. Is it because of bot accounts? Whose games are these bots ruining (never seen them between gold-diamond)? Does it justify a kernel level anti cheat? Honestly, the real problem with this is not the kernel level anti cheat (because I guess that might be useful for games like valorant), it’s the fact that this was never really even close to be necessary
Edit: interestingly enough, riot games itself was reporting in 2020 that cheaters and scripters were ruining a very minor fraction of the games. Ref: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-anti-cheat-in-lol-more/
Scripters and cheating was a pretty common complaint in both r/lol and also on inven and in Chinese forums.
I don’t even consider scripting and macros to be cheating tbh.
Auto dodging, perfect skills hots, staying at max range at all times, instant item usages to maximize potential.
Yeah, nothing illegal officer.
I so wish you had a game with enemy Zeri using scripts. You’d change your mind very quickly.
Yep, a lot of recent anti-cheat is looking a lot like DRM.
Not just DRM, a rootkit which is much worse.
I was gonna care until I read league of legends. Clearly people already hate themselves and despise sensible choices and alternatives. Otherwise they wouldn’t play lol.
Everything bad about LoL is it being a MOBA. I think you can’t prevent toxicity in a MOBA.
In a team with randoms, if you start losing you’re stuck in an unfun game where you get crushed by the ennemi for half an hour.
What’s not to love?
While it wasn’t 100% free from hate, Heroes of the Storm had significantly less of it. Similarly, GW2 has a far friendlier community than WoW, because game design does matter.
Similarly, GW2 has a far friendlier community than WoW, because game design does matter.
So much this.
MOBA is possible to be good and have come back games but LoL is entenched in shitty game design choices from 15 years ago and largely survives because its free to play and anyone interested in MOBAs has heard of it and played it. I’d argue games like smite or monday night combat do the MOBA genre better and advance from crippling rts controls on an action oriented game, but those never caught on cause the moba crowd hates change and innovation.
You must not have paid attention to the smite “pro” scene if you believe that game is in a good spot.
Aaaand there goes linux support
Linux was never supported
Riot games official statement was that they were okay with linux players and actively went out of their way to make sure they didn’t get banned unjustly. They didn’t support linux as a software platform, which is why wine was required, but they did support linux players.
so… they didn’t support Linux. Got it.
Removed by mod
Plenty of people do
Removed by mod
if we’re gonna randomly pedant on people it’s “anglicization”. not that anyone cares.
I think you were looking for anglicisation the other is an Americanisation
that’s a matter of dialect, both spellings are widely used and recognized as correct by english speakers the world over, versus “anglification” being entirely made up by one joker trying to flex how smart they are.
as an aside I really don’t understand the pissing contest over minor spelling variations between the two major dialects of English (a large part of which, a devoted pedant must note, is merely bastardizations of French words), what gets me is stuff that’s the same word for totally different things depending on where you are like chips, biscuit, thong, napkin, pants, etc.
People that care about different things than you.
Difficult as it is to consider, I know.
The Chinese government wants to install a root kit on your PC
If you meet someone playing these games then they are the dumbest people you have run into
2024 still on the red scare, for an american company nonetheless, lmao.
2024 still on the red scare, for an american company nonetheless, lmao.
To be fair, there is a small but real chance that we may be going to war with them someday in the future, over Taiwan.
Do you really want an adversary that can disable a large portion of your populations computers in one fell swoop?
o7 OpenSuse you will be missed. This has been a great blow to the Linux gaming community. Sad I cannot be a part of it after this change.
Wait, are you saying you’re giving up Linux? Seems like you’re saying OpenSUSE will be missed. Really? For LoL???
People who play League are a different breed bro
Yeah. This comment section just looks like a bunch of people who have played league once half a decade ago. Easy to quit something they weren’t doing in the first place.
Meanwhile counter strike players are wanting valve to install kernel level anti cheats because it works so well in valorant.
It’s because VAC kinda sucks. People will rather have a functioning anti-cheat with more access than play with cheaters.
Vanguard is being bypassed as well, but users have now a compromised system to the lowest level possible.
So that isn’t the solution, i would somewhat understand it if no one is able to cheat anymore, but as long as there are hacks available you can give up on kernel level anti-cheat.
I don’t even think the being able to cheat part is the problem. It’s their response time that is great. On the VERY rare occasions I’ve seen hackers in Valorant they were always banned either by the end of the match or within a few hours. Most games can’t say the same.
this
