Riot Games’ Vanguard anti-cheat has come under fire many a time. When it first launched with Valorant, players accused the tech of bricking their PCs, with complaints about its kernel-level access. Those same allegations began to spiral when Vanguard was added to League of Legends in 2024, with high-profile streamer Nick ‘LS’ De Cesare’s computer being one of many that appeared to have issues post-launch. Vanguard’s latest update seems to have struck again, seemingly bricking cheaters’ PCs to the point where a full OS reinstall is the only fix.
If you want to play either Valorant or League of Legends, you have to have Vanguard installed. As a kernel-level anti-cheat, Vanguard operates at the deepest level on your OS, ensuring that hackers can’t just bypass Riot’s anti-cheat systems. We’ve seen it work wonders in recent years, with games now officially terminating if cheaters are found, but the cost is effectively full access to your machine.
The anti-cheat’s latest update seems to have made the tech even more aggressive. Per ‘ogisada’ on X, Vanguard now blocks “the majority of DMA firmwares using SATA/NVMe.” DMA firmware, for those not in the know, is the software used to disguise cheats on your machine, while SATA and NVMe refer to the SSD type you’re using.
“VGK [Vanguard] suddenly triggered an IOMMU restart warning in-game, after which the DMA firmware becomes completely unusable, even without the game running or after uninstalling Vanguard. Only fix is a full OS reinstall.” In non-tech jargon: Vanguard is now allegedly going after DMA firmware whether or not you’re playing Valorant. The FPS game also doesn’t even need to be on your PC for Vanguard to activate, and if Vanguard does go after any DMA firmware on your PC, the only fix is a full Windows OS reinstall.
Quoting ogisada’s post, Riot has responded to a wave of complaints about PCs being rendered unusable, and about the general legalities of operating a system that can, if it chooses to, somewhat destroy someone’s personal PC. “Congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight,” it writes, with an image of various busted PCs. Nuff said there then.
The Vanguard discussion is always going to be a difficult one. Much like everyone else, I’m always happy to see cheaters take an arrow to the knee. If bricking their machine is the only way to stop them from ruining games, especially given the complexity of modern hacks and the resilience of bad actors, it’s hard to argue that Vanguard is doing anything wrong.
It is, however, kernel-level anti-cheat, which does make me somewhat uncomfortable. It operates at the deepest levels of my system, and the knowledge that it can just casually brick my PC if it misidentifies something is pretty terrifying. There’s a lot of conversation about the legalities of a system like Vanguard, and while I’m not a lawyer and I’m not wading into that mess, I can see why it makes people uncomfortable.
As mentioned earlier, you need Vanguard to play Riot’s games. If you don’t have it, or if, like me, yours has a fun habit of malfunctioning, you’re pretty screwed. It seems like Riot isn’t backing down here, though, so if you don’t want it on your system, you’ll likely have to forfeit playing its games. That’s a choice only you can make.
