Riot outlines how Valorant has “less cheating” than you think

Even with Riot’s controversial Vanguard system safeguarding Valorant, cheaters still find a way to slip through the cracks. However, the issue might not be as oppressive as you first thought, according to Riot’s anti-cheat lead.

Valorant is a highly competitive First-Person Shooter where every millisecond matters. Encountering cheaters can be absolutely crushing in such an intense game, regardless of your skill level. Riot’s Vanguard system looked to block out pesky cheats from day one of the Closed Beta, though players still found ways around this “invasive” software. 

Cheating has been prevalent since Valorant’s full release on June 2, and the issue has since been amplified with the launch of competitive three weeks later.

Despite recent backlash, Riot’s anti-cheat lead, Paul ‘arkem’ Chamberlain, has detailed why the issue is actually smaller than players may think.

Obviously developers aim to outright prevent cheating across the board in Valorant. Though even if they achieved a “0.01% cheater rate,” the game could “still feel like it’s full of cheating,” Chamberlain expressed.

“Cheaters are very visible,” he continued. “They appear on streams [or] Reddit. Just having a match ruined in spectacular fashion will stick with you, even if it happens one in a thousand games.”

Players are often extremely vocal when it comes to highlighting cheaters. This applies to all manner of titles, including FPS games. Therefore, the issue of cheating can appear larger than it actually is, the dev explained.

Touching on Valorant specifically, he mentioned that “it’s hard to measure cheating rates because we often have imperfect detection.” Most of the time, cheaters are caught out thanks to the help of players using the in-game report functions, along with automatic “detections” and more in-depth “research.”

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The more that players are reported for their suspicious behavior, the more cheaters will be erased from the game altogether. With the new ranking system, it’s likely that these suspicious accounts will appear more frequently in the higher ranks.

In fact, the first Asia-Pacific account to reach the game’s top rank, Radiant, was recently caught out for using cheats.

Despite the ongoing prevalence of cheating in Valorant, Chamberlain believes the team at Riot is “doing well. Things aren’t perfect, and there are improvements to make, but there’s less cheating than I feared,” he concluded at the end of the thread.

If you come across a cheater in your next Valorant session, be sure to use the report function. This will bring them to Riot’s attention in the most efficient way possible. While the developers appear to be mostly pleased with the game’s current state, the issue could continue to shrink over time with your help.