VALORANT’s anti-cheat system Vanguard is coming to LoL

In an attempt to prevent cheaters and scripters from disrupting the game, Riot Games announced it will bring Vanguard to LoL as well.

LoL will be getting the anti-cheat software Vanguard

Head of League studio Andrei “Riot Meddler” van Roon made the official announcement in the preview of the 2024 LoL season. He explained that the decision was “a response to the feedback around a high number of bots in games, disruptive smurfs in Ranked, and an increase in scripting.”Just like on Riot’s FPS game VALORANT, the software will terminate the game if it detects cheating, with ranked points being refunded to players affected.

Vanguard was initially met with a bit of controversy due to the ‘kernel-mode’ driver behind it. This means that Vanguard runs in the background, and works constantly whenever your PC is on. This was seen as too intrusive by some of the players from the VALORANT community who reported issues with other software or even keyboard and mouse control. Since the launch of 2020, however, Riot has been looking to reduce the number of programs that its software interacts with while also ensuring it lowers the instances of cheating within the game. Given the amount of experience gained from VALORANT, it looks like Riot will be bringing something similar to League of Legends.

An anti-cheat system has been used on Chinese servers for many years, which automatically disconnects the player if it detects something. Pro player JackeyLove was recently caught disconnecting due to outplaying the opponents too hard. That said, the software seems to be from a third-party program. Vanguard, instead, will be the official one from Riot.

Aside from that, many more updates are coming for 2024, including a trailer for Arcane season 2, as well as changes to the competitive format for Worlds and MSI.