Riot has released Patch 14.9 for League of Legends. However, this seems to be causing significant problems for many players. Riot itself explains that it cannot be attributed to the game or the anti-cheat system.
What is currently happening in LoL? After the release of “League of Legends” Patch 14.9, parts of the community are loudly complaining about Riot and the MOBA: Players are accusing the anti-cheat software “Vanguard” of destroying players’ PCs or deleting important operating system data.
However, the developers at Riot stated that they have not yet “confirmed any cases where Vanguard has damaged hardware.” This is surprising because reports have been piling up on Reddit and Twitter about computers failing to start.
It is a kernel-mode driver: it checks other drivers and blocks them if it detects that they have a known vulnerability that could be exploited to compromise the anti-cheat client. The downside is that the software can intervene deeply into the system.
Players are complaining on social media about the anti-cheat software Vanguard
What are players saying? The colleagues at PCGamesN quote several players who report their problems:
- One person explains that their laptop no longer starts and doesn’t draw any power from the charger.
- Another explains that they had to remove the CMOS battery and reset the battery to access the BIOS and repair the PC running Vanguard.
Others speculate that the true number of cases is much higher than the figures Riot is currently using to argue for its software. Many would solve the problems themselves and therefore do not report them. And these numbers wouldn’t be counted either:
It’s hard to believe that the numbers are so low. Personally, I had issues that I resolved myself and never reported. I strongly suspect that most problems are not reported.
(via reddit.com)
Another affected person adds that these problems had already existed with Valorant. For many people, certain hardware no longer worked with Vanguard because it interfered with too many legitimate drivers, causing either the game or the PC to crash (via reddit.com):
There were many legitimate problems with Vanguard when Valorant launched. The official communication channels were quick to censor and shut down discussions about it.
Riot says: No cases of damaged hardware have been confirmed so far
What does Riot say about this? The operators of LoL have now spoken out and responded to players’ problems. Riot explained (via dotesports.com):
- Most initial problems are related to “common error codes” or driver errors, and not something malicious.
- In particular, the developers stated that they have “not yet confirmed any cases where Vanguard has damaged hardware.”
- Riot added that some “confusing” BIOS issues have arisen, mainly related to switching the UEFI mode and the SecureBoot settings.
- “Overall, the rollout has gone well, and we are already seeing that Vanguard is functioning as intended. We have already observed a significant decrease in bot accounts in the usual places and will continue to monitor this,” explained Matthew “K3o” Paoletti, Riot’s anti-cheat manager.
Are the complaints new? No, not really. When Riot implemented its anti-cheat program in Valorant, there were many complaints on social media from players stating that their computers would no longer start.
At that time, Riot had also responded that it was neither the game nor Vanguard that was at fault (via pcgamer.com). Instead, they pointed out that other competitive games also use anti-cheat software that deeply intervenes in the system, such as Call of Duty, Overwatch, or Apex Legends.
The controversial anti-cheat tool Vanguard has also impacted streamers and other personalities. One was playing a Swiftplay match with other players when he was banned. The curious thing: The ban occurred right in the headquarters of developer Riot:
