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.
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.
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!
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).
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.
TL;DR Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime.
Yeah guys lets all trust a company to have a program on our PC's turned on all the time. We all know companies always do whats best for us and not their shareholders. Never in the history of mankind we consumers were f**ked by companies. Yeah guys it's fine let them have acess to your computer ALL THE TIME even when the game IS NOT running...
What could go wrong? I want to thank you Arkem for clarifying this, and convince me and hopeful others to not install this spyware of a game.
I'm sorry to hear that we haven't earned your trust. Maybe our actions will convince you in the future.
i take it this will be the same anti-cheat that is planned to be implanted to the league client in the near future ?
League of Legends might one day adopt Riot Vanguard as its anti-cheat system but there's no timeline for it.
The article about it was a little confusing because we posted it on the League website (because there was no Valorant website yet) and we didn't want to suggest that Valorant was about to release.
Explained in slightly more detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/fxhjgx/crosshair_dot_is_not_in_the_middle_of_my_screen/fmviwwx?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x
Basically, make sure your dots and lines are all even numbers or all odd numbers. If you mix even and odd you'll get misaligned elements.
Hey Arkem, could you possibly add support for shadow pc? Some of my friends have bad computers but the anti cheat detects the computer as a virtual machine and they are forced to play on their bad computer.
Sorry, we have no plans to support streaming services like Shadow at this time. We might reconsider in the future if we can find a way to do so without weakening our anti-cheat systems.
That's good to hear but what is your exact position in the company? Not to be rude but I hope you have some meaningfull say in the final decision.
I'm definitely not the CEO or anything but I'm well placed to make a promise about no cryptocurrency mining in our game.
Currently I'm the anti-cheat lead for VALORANT. On behalf of Joe and Anna (the game leads) I oversee the product and tech decisions relating to security issues for the game. Previously I was the tech lead for the company's central anti-cheat technology team (the Vanguard team basically).
I've been at Riot for more than 6 years now so I'm fairly well integrated into the technical organization, I'm confident that no official decision to add a cryptominer or any similar tech to the game would be possible without me hearing about it and having a chance to stop it. Not that I ever think it'd come to that!
Are there any plans to add further customization to crosshairs?
Yes! So many things yet to do.
On the crosshair improvements list. Will sort it out!
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I'm sorry to hear that, I hope that over time we'll be able to earn your trust.
We haven't yet incorporated a lot of our teamwork/communication features into the tutorial, so I'll provide a quick overview of how the "threat indicators" work.
How do they work?
When a teammate dies, a snapshot is taken of the enemy locations visible to that recently deceased player. All remaining living allies get "threat indicators" that point to those last known enemy locations - the closer the location to the viewer, the bigger the indicator. The positions being indicated are not updated as the enemy moves, so it's only reliable information for a few moments, and it's not very precise.
Why are they in the game?
In a perfect world, when an ally dies they promptly share a specific enemy location via voice chat. The rest of your team, simply by listening, can absorb this new info and adjust their tactics to react to the changing game state. These sorts of callouts are critical to making decisions about wh...
Read moreAny comment on the cheating programs that have already popped up
It sucks, we're working on it. More details here: https://old.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/fzxdl7/anticheat_starts_upon_computer_boot/fn7bqh2/
Only thing I dislike is the mini map, it is so f**king bad
Please, elaborate.
We have a handful of changes in the works related to the clarity of health and ammo status, and the minimap.
If you're having issues finding yourself on the minimap, try turning "Keep Player Centered = On" so the map always positions with you at the center. The trade-off if that you'll lose full map visibility (unless you zoom out a lot), but it might help with reading it quickly.
We'll be looking at everyone's settings to see what players are changing to most frequently, and we'll adjust the defaults where it makes sense.
I feel like it’s because the map is orientated differently on each map. My minimap is fixed but on some maps the layout has the bomb sites going left to right while others have it top to bottom (if that makes sense). So you have to orient yourself differently on different maps. Kinda confusing sometimes
We're adding an option to keep the map oriented the same (on the side) all the time, or change the fixed orientation so that your starting side is on the bottom (attacker vs. defender).
Read moreMay I ask about accessibility software? I create custom AHK scripts for clients with limited use of their hands (such as RSI, missing fingers, etc), often times these scripts are paired with adaptive controllers.
Most of the scripts I make allow users to toggle things that the game often doesnt allow them too, or presses multiple buttons at once (sometime with a timings between them). For example in Valorant I've had a request to make a toggle run / walk key. All these scripts are aimed at making the users time spent playing more comfortable.
If it's a multiplayer PvP game I aim to get the go ahead from the devs before I start building things for people, and in the past there has been fair concern and pushback from some companies because of the "slippery slope" that these type of things can bring. On the other hand, some companies have even gone as far as to replicate the functionality of our accessibility software straight into their game, specifically ArenaNet bui...
At the moment we are ok with people using programs like AHK, we can't provide support for them but we will also not actively block them or ban people for running it.
If AHK becomes something that is being abused we may need to restrict it, ideally feature by feature but possibly blocking the whole program. In that case we would make sure we announced the policy change ahead of taking any actions.
I'd hope we'd also be able to work with the community to find alternatives means to improve the game's accessibility. Long term it would be great if we had the needed tools in game for players but even absent that we'd try to provide some accomodation.
I don't like that it is that way. I have never cheated but I personally think there should be some option to turn it off. I am playing mutliple games and I still fear that the 20 thousand different anti cheat systems will interfere with each other and might get me banned somewhere else. Isn't it possible to implement a feature that it is turned off and if you wanna start the game, then you have to restart to turn it on AND you have a display somewhere that it's currently running? No one wants cheaters and I am all with you in the fight, I still don't want to get banned because let's say XIGNCODE3 from Black Desert Online detects Vanguard as Anti-cheat or vise versa. Cheating is a big issue especially in F2P games, I would even pay 15€ for a Premium Status that prioritizes matching me with other premium people (I think CS:GO had a similiar system).
We're trying to play as nicely with other software as possible, if we find incompatibilities fix them as soon as possible.
You can basically do what you're suggesting (except for the display part) by uninstalling Vanguard when you're not playing. You can uninstall it from Add/Remove programs.
For the display part there might be a quick script someone could write that displays a message on the screen if vgk.sys is loaded. Maybe someone could use something like RainMeter to make a custom desktop text label?
Correct. It’s Tuesday. :)
Thanks Danker! I'm pretty excited :)
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