Riot Games has finally rolled out its Vanguard anti-cheat to League of Legends. In the wake of this update, various users have expressed concerns and shared negative technical experiences, with some claiming the update has bricked their PCs. In response, Riot has come out publically and stood by the implementation, pointing to a relatively miniscule number of these reports against the total player base, and identifying key causes and fixes.
Vanguard – a kernel level anti-cheat – has proven controversial since its implimentation into Riot Games’ FPS Valorant back in 2020. These concerns range from privacy isses, as it not only has access to the most authoratitive layer of your operating system, but also takes screenshots of your game to ensure you’re not using any pesky cheats. As a kernel level bit of software that’s always running, it’s also put a toll on players’ older machines with its high CPU usage.
With that context, we can look back to this week’s eruption from parts of the League of Legends community. As soon as the Vanguard patch went live, reports on social media popped up pointing to bricked PCs, and noting that those playing on Virtual Machines (including Nvidia Now) or those without UEFI or TPM2.0 enabled on their PCs weren’t having it function properly.
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