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RiotArkem

RiotArkem



13 Apr

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Originally posted by Mesong0

I'm not sure if this is because of that driver, but I tabbed out of game and closed it from the windows screen, PC essentially took a shit, couldnt shutdown via start menu, had to turn it off via power button and got stuck in a boot loop, couldn't even get to automatic repair, it'd just black screen, never happened before, only thing I could think of was the Valorant anti-cheat, after about 30 restarts it just sorted itself out. But still, thought I'd mention it.

My guess is this is a graphics problem, we've got some window manager improvements coming in one of our updates that I hope will fix issues like this.

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Originally posted by BillDino

Does it work with Shadow Streaming service? I've heard you guys ban people playing with Shadow

We don't support game streaming services right now

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Originally posted by Daysofreckoning

I'm sure you guys are doing a great job too. Normally an anti cheat using these practices would give me pause but I know the great work you guys do over there so I am not bothered.

Thanks for the kind words!

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Originally posted by HWKQ

so if I were to use cheatengine for a singleplayer game for example would it have any effect?

You shouldn't have a problem as long as Valorant isn't running

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Originally posted by UltraInstinks

May I ask? Will this ever be available for usage in other UE4 games?

Right now, BattlEye needs to be dethroned. They offer extremely unfair pricing.

For fellow game devs, you should really consider creating a product that plugs into UE4 games and provides such amazing level of AC.

Thoughts? I'm a game Dev myself and I'm making an FPS. Having Riot level of amazing experience would be spectacular. Please consider it!!!

We're focusing on VALORANT first but Vanguard was designed to be able to included with multiple games. We were thinking other Riot games but maybe one day we can work with other game studios too.

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Originally posted by Blizzxx

Did you work on league of legends security and if so, was Valorant harder or easier to setup? I would imagine league was easier as so many things are server side.

I worked on early League of Legends anti-cheat and we definitely had some things going for us. League of Legends was built in a way that was fairly cheat resistant to begin with (much of the game being server side) and due to the moba gameplay the maximum effectiveness of your basic cheat was lower than your average shooter.

We still had to build a bunch of protections for the game and I'm really proud of the work me and the rest of the team did. Especially in recent years where the anti-cheat got upgraded again (after I'd move on to Valorant).

I think the threat to Valorant is higher due to the nature of competitive shooters and that's why we've taken a different approach to security with Riot Vanguard.

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Originally posted by LDKtv

Awesome Arkem! I have one question regarding the AC. Will it be a possibility for neural deep-learning hub for busting cheaters as well?

Similar to VACNET from Valve.

Yes! Our game server saves aim vector data and we using it in machine learning experiments to detect aimbots. It's still a research project for now but so far the results are encouraging!

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Originally posted by sinex93

Is this stuff running in the background gonna get me a vac ban?

We work with other anti-cheat providers whenever we suspect a conflict so that we can avoid problems. If you ever think you've got a problem with two anti-cheats fighting let me know and I'll investigate.

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Originally posted by nationwide13

You only state it doesn't collect any information about the computer, does it collect any information at all?

The Vanguard driver exists to protect the game and anti-cheat processes. It doesn't collect information because its job is protection rather than detection.

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Originally posted by nationwide13

You're doing your best, but are you going to refund me for time and money spent in other games if your software causes me to get banned?

As a team (imo) you should be WAY more transparent and offer more options when it comes to this driver that is running 24/7. I'm pretty positive you guys broke a lot of trust by the fact that this is being pointed out by a user, and your only answers to people who are worried about their security and safety (right after breaking that trust) is "we're trying our best"

Edit: someone linked an article from 2 months ago that appears to talk about the driver, so you did let people know, apologize for being wrong there.

I still think overall it's weird, and reading replies it looks like you continually dodge questions regarding how/where this appears in the ToS/other legal stuff.

If you get unfairly banned we're happy to investigate it, it's rare that we make mistakes but it has happened and we're willing to own up to them.

We're pretty confident that our ToS and privacy policies cover everything we're doing with Vanguard. If you think there's a gap let us know so we can talk to our policy experts about fixing it.

At the end of the day each individual has to make a call about what software they're willing to run on their computers. We're hoping that we can provide enough information about our software that people will be confident running VALORANT and Vanguard on their computers.

If you don't want to run our software on your computer that's ok we understand, maybe we can change your mind one day.

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Originally posted by jjrv360

Out of curiosity why is this method used for valorant but not for league?

I don't want to speak definitively for League but here's how I see it.

Different games see different cheating threats. League of Legends is in a good spot currently with its existing system. Moving over to Vanguard could help but it would require a fair amount of effort so until it looks like that effort will be needed it's going to be a low priority task.

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Originally posted by xWangan

This is good for stopping cheaters because a common way to bypass anti-cheat systems is to load cheats before the anti-cheat system starts and either modify system components to contain the cheat or to have the cheat tamper with the anti-cheat system as it loads. Running the driver at system startup time makes this significantly more difficult.

You say this, yet later on you state that it doesn't actually scan anything etc. unless the game is running, so wouldn't your statement here be false? It's either scanning my PC and thanks to this fact it could help with the issue u raised, or it doesn't, and then it's useless to load it at boot.

So, which is it?

Since the driver doesn't send any information to our servers and it's not trying to identify cheats or ban anyone I say that it's not scanning.

Instead it exists to protect the game client and it can better do that if it loads at system startup time. Think of it as a protection mechanism rather than an anti-cheat system itself.


12 Apr

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Originally posted by nthackerguy

Why do you guys run such a PR game like this. As someone who also works in a similar role, it all seems like bull.

Firstly you have this fog of war thing you keep parroting. I genuinely applaud you if you have someone who solved this. But anyone who did solve this is in the wrong role. This is very much a math/CS theory PhD type of problem. Like literally very knee deep distributed system stuff, with all their fancy mutli valued logics. Why would someone in Systems/malware, literally the CS section for the kids who sucked at math, design this?

Anyways, from what we’ve seen analyzed so far, it seems like that’s a lie as well. Sure you can limit it and try, but there’s literally 0 way for that data to not exist on the computer for people in at least a small bound.

Secondly, why even go Kernel. You can’t hook syscalls with the ssdt, or patch functions anymore without some insane hacks. But then you have a team of SVA’s looking for it to get it patched.

...

Read more

For Fog of War I've got an article about it coming out on Tuesday on our tech blog. Maybe it'll answer your questions. I'm no CS PhD but I did spend a fair amount of time working in Unreal Engine's networking systems to build it.

Would you like to participate in our bug bounty? I'd love to get your impressions after you've had some more hands on time with our tech. We pay bounties for information leading to improvements in our security and it sounds like you have a lot to contribute.

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Originally posted by Daysofreckoning

Did you work on the anti cheat in LoL. Cause I must say it is amazing that in the past 3 years I havent seen so much as one scripter.

Thank you! I didn't personally have much to do with it (I've been on Valorant most of that time) but the team worked hard on protecting LoL and I'll make sure I pass on your praise.

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Originally posted by MikeZack

I gotta say I haven't played many before riot made games before valorant except for league and maybe only 20 matches on it but I love the transparency the team at riot is showing. Seems like many game companies hide from there communities(Infinity ward.. cough cough) and you guys are jumping right in talking with us on reddit, the interviews with twitch streamers and just the overall openness about your product and why certain decisions are made. Its truly appreciated and I think its what users want from Devs.

Thanks for the kind words!

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Originally posted by FormUp

The follow up question would be, "Okay, but what about the rest of the anti-cheat software?"

The driver is the only component that runs while the game is closed. The rest of the anti-cheat system is only active while the game is active.

The anti-cheat system does communicate with our servers both to verify that the system is running on your computer and to receive instructions of what cheat detections to run.

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Originally posted by GlockWan

Are you not worried about releasing too much information on how the anti cheat works? I suppose surface level stuff about fog of war isn’t too much of an issue and everyone already knows about it

It's a delicate balance. There are a lot of topics that we go too deep into but where possible I want to be open with everyone about our efforts.

I think Fog of War is a good one to talk about because its effectiveness isn't harmed by details being released. Also it's one of the few security things out there that can be shown in illustrations and clips.

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Originally posted by illestjar

have you guys considered doing a “PRIME” version of valorant where players pay for more secure anti-cheat servers like CS:GO?

We hope that we can bring a secure experience to all players but we're not going to rule anything out!

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Originally posted by MikeZack

If you played Black Ops 4 "fog of war" was one of the most hated things about the game. Basically the game mechanic would ping a guy on the mini map behind a wall that you otherwise wouldve never seen or known was there. I find it ironically funny that you guys are using that term to prevent wall hacks.

Yeah I can see why that would be funny :)

We call it Fog of War because it's analogous to the Fog of War system in League of Legends (some of the technical concepts overlap too).

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Originally posted by Warskull

The driver has a lot of privileges. Someone finds a bug in the driver that lets them do arbitrary code execution. They can now use the driver to take control of your system and install viruses.

Street Fighter 5 tried to do anti-cheat this way and it ended up being a gigantic security hole.

It's true, that's why we put a lot of effort into security auditing. Our internal security team as well as multiple external consultants have done reviews of our driver to try and identify privilege escalation issues.

I can't guarantee that we're perfect but we've invested a lot to avoid putting a vulnerable driver out into the world.