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Hey everyone! League team and the Anti-Cheat team here with an update on Vanguard. We’ve been following a lot of the Vanguard conversations that have been raised either here or on other social platforms and we wanted to give some clarification on a few of the popular points you might have seen.
Overall, the rollout has gone well and we’re already seeing Vanguard functioning as intended. We’ve already seen a hard drop off of bot accounts in the usual places, and we will continue to monitor this.
Since 14.9 went live, fewer than 0.03% of players have reported issues with Vanguard. In most cases, these are common error codes such as VAN codes 128, 152, 1067, -81, 9001, or 68 that are easily solved through player support or troubleshooting, and account for the vast majority of issues we are seeing. There are also a few trickier situations that have popped up that we’re actively looking into; driver incompatibilities for example. If you're running into issues like this please contact Player Support.
We also plan on sharing a full external report with you in the coming weeks/months after Vanguard has been live for a bit.
Below are a few areas that we want to make sure we provide some additional clarity around immediately.
Bricking Hardware
At this point in time, we have not confirmed any instances of Vanguard bricking anyone’s hardware, but we want to encourage anyone who's having issues to contact Player Support so we can look into it and help out. We’ve individually resolved a few of the major threads you may have seen so far of users claiming this with their machines and have confirmed that Vanguard wasn’t the cause of the issues they were facing.
About ~0.7% of the playerbase bypassed Microsoft’s enforcement for TPM 2.0 when they installed Windows 11, but the rollout of Vanguard requires that those players now enable it to play the game. This requires a change to a BIOS setting, which differs based on the manufacturer. Vanguard does not and cannot make changes to the BIOS itself.
BIOS settings can be confusing, and we’ve seen two niche cases where it’s created an issue.
The first is that many manufacturers prompt a switch to UEFI mode when TPM 2.0 is enabled, but if the existing Windows 11 installation is on an MBR partition, it would become unbootable afterwards. Some OEMs support LegacyBoot mode with TPM 2.0, but to support UEFI mode, Windows 11 must be installed on a GPT partition. Microsoft has a guide and a helpful tool that can help avoid a reformat and reinstall if you’re in this scenario.
The second was a player we spoke to that accidentally also enabled SecureBoot with a highly custom configuration. While Vanguard makes use of the SecureBoot setting on VALORANT, we elected not to use it for League, due to the older hardware that comprises its userbase. Older rigs can have compatibility issues with this setting, and that’s actually one of the primary reasons the Vanguard launch was delayed.
For example, some GPUs are known to have Option ROM that is not UEFI SecureBoot capable (especially older cards), and sometimes this can result from players having flashed it themselves to “unlock” the card. If the Option ROM isn’t signed, enabling SecureBoot would prevent your GPU from rendering anything (since it won’t boot), resulting in a black screen. There would be two ways to fix this: Connect the monitor to an integrated graphics card (if you have one) and then disable SecureBoot in BIOS. Remove your CMOS battery to reset back to default settings.
TL;DR - We DO NOT require SecureBoot for League of Legends. Don’t enable it unless you are sure you want to.
Vanguard Screenshots
To be very clear, Vanguard DOES NOT take a screenshot of your whole computer/multiple monitors. However, it will take a picture of your game client (in fullscreen) and the region your game client occupies (in windowed/borderless) for suspicious activity related to ESP hacks.
This is a very normal practice when it comes to anti-cheat and almost all anti-cheat do this. It is also a known element within the community of folks familiar with anti-cheat software. When it comes to privacy concerns, Vanguard features are compliant with regional privacy laws, and the team works directly with Information Security teams and Compliance teams to ensure that Vanguard is safe.
As a reminder, please check out our latest blog for all the facts around Vanguard in League and we'll talk to you again soon with the full report in the coming weeks.
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