In Valorant continues to actively hunt cheaters. Those who are caught receive a permanent ban and may never play in Riot’s team shooter again. To make it even more painful for the cheaters, they will now also have to listen to admonitions about their misconduct and actively acknowledge it.
What is Riot doing against cheaters? Cheaters are a major nuisance in all competitive online games. This is also true for Valorant. That’s why the developers implemented a hardcore anti-cheat software called Vanguard during the beta that starts working as soon as the system boots up.
This can only be disabled if you no longer wish to play Valorant. If Vanguard detects a cheater, it quickly leads to a ban. Such “soul bans” are permanent hardware bans that ideally remove cheaters from the game forever, unless they take very complex and costly measures.
Recently, on July 2, 2020, a wave of fraudsters was caught again. According to Riot Games, 3,707 cheaters suffered the “soul ban”.
How cheaters will be informed in the future
What will change soon for cheaters? For more transparency in the communication of such bans, Game Director Joe Ziegler presented a new policy via Twitter. Those who are banned will receive a message with the following wording:
This account has been permanently banned for the use of prohibited third-party software, and will no longer be able to log into Valorant.
This type of behavior damages the community and the competitive integrity of Valorant. This action cannot be reversed.
In addition to this admonishing text, banned cheaters can also learn about third-party software via a link.
To further humiliate the cheaters, they must acknowledge all of this remorsefully by clicking a big, red button. It prominently says “I understand this”.
How fans are reacting: The players of Valorant received the news on Twitter with a lot of humor. Some fans celebrated that Riot seems to force cheaters to admit their misconduct like naughty school children before they have to “stand in the corner”:
- Neph Malphur: “You really force them to click that button!?”
- Jo: “This is the scariest shit I’ve ever read!”
- Vanenzo: “I love the part where it says ‘This action cannot be reversed’. Great job, Valorant team!”
Other users were concerned about the message and asked whether certain tools and trackers would count as illegal third-party software and whether one could expect a ban for any form of such programs.
Hopefully, Riot will clarify this in more detail later and explain what exactly is now forbidden or whether one should avoid running any additional software while playing Valorant. It is unfortunately known that Valorant’s anti-cheat software Vanguard sometimes overreacts. For example, a pro gamer was kicked from the game because he wanted to charge his phone on the PC.
Want more info about Valorant? Then check out our extensive user ranking of the most popular agents and champions in Riot Games’ team shooter. Here you will find all 11 heroes ranked by their popularity.
