Valorant’s anti-cheat boss admits hackers are “inevitable” despite record bans
riot gamesValorant’s head of anti-cheat has admitted it is “inevitable” that you’ll run into a cheater at some point, despite a record number of bans being handed out.
The Vanguard anti-cheat in Valorant is one of the most robust systems in all of gaming. However, even Riot Games can’t stop cheaters from getting through and impacting games from time to time.
While other anti-cheats will kick cheaters out of a game or just ban them right away, Vanguard will shut matches down if it has been infiltrated, denying them the chance to ruin your rank. We’ve even seen Riot offer bounties for those would-be hackers who can expose serious flaws in it.
Over the holiday period, players complained about an influx of new cheaters, suggesting it had gotten worse than ever while the devs were on a break.
Valorant dev reveals huge cheating data in hacker spike
Now, Valorant’s head of anti-cheat, Phillip Koskinas, has revealed that a record-setting pace of bans have been handed out recently but cheaters are still going to happen.
“Ultimately, it is inevitable that you will encounter a cheater eventually, but we will just keep banning them all, over and over again, until they finally work up the courage to run the uninstaller,” Koskinas said on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“The weekend of January 10th to 13th was our highest sustained ban velocity on record, with almost 7 suspensions occurring every minute.”
The Valorant dev added that around 1% of ranked games have cheaters in them, but there was a point where that spiked to 10% in Brazil. This was due to a wave of pixelbots in the region.
“VALORANT is free-to-play, with almost no barrier to entry, and there’s no such thing as truly “permanent” ban,” he added.
“Even with the best hardware fingerprinting in this universe at its disposal, Vanguard can only keep a determined cheater out for a little while—they will eventually get back in.”
Koskinas noted that in Act 2, a Ranked Rollback system will be in place to protect ranked games. If you’re accidentally placed with a hacker, your rank will be protected. However, queuing alongside one will get you both banned.