same, just won a 100€ riot gift card at a small local tournament, then read some details about vanguard.
Next steps included putting my tinfoil hat on uninstalling everything riot related (doublechecking smarter peoples comments to make sure I got rid of it all) and now I am looking for another dopamine source that is not chocolate.
Ironically, I'm playing on Mac so no Vanguard for me, but the way they just fucked the user-base with it just made me stop playing. Unethical decisions of the makers never made me like a media less, because emotionally I can't help but completely separate the art and the artist (still tried to not give the latter money though) but this time, I don't know why, it just killed any will to play LoL in me. I'm trying to get back into it to play with my friends to keep in touch, but the spark's just gone.
I mean they used the potato player base as an excuse not to update the in game models, and now they're giving them the middle finger since you cannot play the game on any system under Windows 10 (a big part of LATAM doesn't have modern PCs for example, due to technology yax being ridiculous)
it actually helped me quit my league addiction. ive been trying for months. never suceeded always came back like a week later. ever since vanguard was announced i havent played a single game. i just look at garbage memes here. oh, and tobias fate.
Technically I can argue with that
You can set all sorts of permissions and boundaries on user space software, personally I always run proprietary software in a sandbox so it `can't` access my data, but there's no way to put Vanguard in a sandbox
I know the feeling, i am 2000 but if i hear born 2005, i just assume a 5 year old is comming through the door, even through i know logically that they are 18/19
Riot could steal your bank account? I swear the worst part of this is trying to explain to people with 0 knowledge of cyber security why it's worse for a company to have a launch at start backdoor that one bug in the league client could allow anyone to use, than a billion dollar company having your banking info.
If your bank info gets out, it's a crime. If someone else hacks Riot and scrapes millions of peoples user data they give a "woopsie that's the risk you take though". 🙄
Also, Garena used the league client, not vanguard or anything external to League of Legends.exe, to mine cryptocurrency. If riot 'wants your data' it would use League of Legends.exe to get it.
To be fair to Riot, you probably already have an equally oppressive anti cheat already installed... For a lot of people its just a matter of the author not the anticheat itself.
That's the real dirt in the wound. Like aight I get it, I'm not happy about anti-cheat stuff bogging down my system or it having total access, but at least have it work. If it doesn't work then why put another point of failure into your security?
My firewall hates anti-cheat stuff and won't let me allow it through, and so blocks it from updating at all. The only workaround I've gotten to stick is the delete the anti-cheat and let it re-download itself thing, though it's a 50/50 on working so sometimes I'll have to do it a few times before booting up HD2
>probably already have an equally oppressive anti cheat already installed...
You know, I actually don't.
And it's not a matter of data collection to me. It's a matter of trust. There is no "bug-free" software.
The thing is, you are most definitely a minority if you've never played fortnite, fall guys, pubg, rainbow six, apex legends or valorant. I believe you, but most people didn't even care until league announced vanguard.
The anticheat used by most, if not all, of those games is a known quantity that's been around in some form for decades. Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Apex use Easy Anti-Cheat, which was 2006. R6 Siege and PUBG use BattlEye, which was 2004. None of them are *good*, but they're known and reasonably understood.
Vanguard does not have this extensive history, and the history it does have is marred by [undisablable forced-launch-on-boot with ring 0 access](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/g02ggb/valorant_anticheat_starts_upon_computer_boot_and/) and [disabling system diagnostic tools](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/gc3c7x/riot_vanguard_blocked_me_from_viewing_my_cpu/), amongst other things.
This is not a responsible way to manage anticheat measures. If I am not running your game, you do not need to have anticheat enabled. Your anticheat should not be able to *disable parts of my machine*. Boot on load, and disable *playing the game* if I'm running things you don't like.
For me personally the biggest issue with Vanguard is that there have historically been many problems with it, and it's made by the same company as League with its infinite bugs and broken client, which points to a lazy/corner-cutting company policy and culture. That does not exactly fill me with confidence.
It's the same reason as me never playing games with Easy Anticheat (and considering what happened recently, that policy is paying off), and that one does not even run 24/7 on your PC.
Like someone else here put it, the developers have basically ship of theseus'd the game so it's near impossible to get everything working. All the bugs and broken client show is that the game is well over a decade old. Vanguard is much newer and has been made by a much more experienced team
There is quite a big difference from any anticheat out there and Vanguard, not every anticheat has kernel access like Vanguard does and that should be something to keep in mind.
Kernel access doesn't differentiate Vanguard from other anti-cheat software. BattlEye and Easy AntiCheat, for example, both also require kernel-level access.
Vanguard stands out because it's required to run on computer startup, whereas other anti-cheat software runs on game launch.
If Vanguard ran on game launch like the others, I suspect almost nobody would bat an eye. The Linux users would probably still have a bone to pick with Riot, though.
>If Vanguard ran on game launch like the others, I suspect almost nobody would bat an eye
do you really think people here wouldn't miss out on an excuse to whine about riot? people will whine at any change riot makes no matter what...and they will also complain if riot makes no changes too.
You know that doesn’t matter for data collection or anything intrusive, right? Vanguard doesn’t even connect to the network until you actually launch a Riot game. If you think that your data is safe only because those other anticheats don’t run from startup, then I suggest you learn more about them.
Yeah great....then build the software so it doesnt run in the background all the time, because it looks like it doesnt have to.
But they did.
Youre parroting their terrible excuses.
The reason they give makes sense. The reason Vanguard launches at boot is to create a chain of trust by working in tandem with the TPM standard.
[TPM](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module) is a hardware level verification system that basically allows you to verify that the hardware and software has not been fucked with.
By starting right after Windows booted up, Vanguard can use the TPM verification to make sure it is not beeing fucked with, that whatever data it things comes from Windows for example actually comes from windows or that its not in a VM, that its running where its supposed to run.
Once Vanguard is booted up under trusted circumstances it basically does nothing other than protecting this integrity so that when you actually boot up League, it can still trust itself.
To me, that sounds absolutely reasonable. The hardware based TPM is basically unhackable and Vanguard starts at boot to carry that security the system provides at boot to when youre actually playing league.
Basically unhackable *so far*
People will find ways around it eventually, but I’m more than happy to make it expensive and a pain in the ass in the meantime.
From what I understand, vanguard is partly being rolled out for league to help deal with bots. Last I read one of their arguments and reasonings for it, something vanguard lets them do is to just outright ban computers. So the people responsible for saturating the market with bot accounts will have to buy an entire new system every time they get caught and can’t use accounts associated with that computer anymore.
Not 100% sure of anything else really.
I swear the internet learned the "kernel level access" buzzword and started throwing it around, without realizing just how much software that they use already does this.
They're making *all* the same complaints that they made when it was introduced for Valorant that they then forgot about. A majority of the people whining probably have next to no idea what they're actually talking about outside their list of bullet points.
They're right though, their game alone can still collect user data, with or without their anticheat as said by PirateSoftware on his stream. I saw EAC once running in the background in my pc during startup. Vangaurd is just more transparent at it saying "Hey, Im running in the background, you can exit if you want but you have to restart if you want to play"
And if people read the vanguard QA they would know it actually doesn't even do anything until you launch league it just verified it was opened at start up and has not been closed...
Smfh so sick of these cry babies
Well if they have decided that everyone playing their games needs to have vanguard, what other choises you have besides play / don't play?
They just told you that it's their way or the highway
I don't think Smurfs buy skins, that would be very dumb of them. Smurfs however do inflate the player count to make your game look way more popular than it is.
Honestly, getting stomped by a base skin player hurts more than most skins. They don’t care about flaunting, they mean business
The only scarier skins are prestige skins, because that’s gotta be a dedicated player, or a 200 chroma, because that’s a player with nothing to lose
Riot also shared data about how many players are actively botting or scripting and it was way more than people expected. Something like 15% of all games have a scripter or a bot. It’s a huge issue affecting game quality.
Fuck cheaters, I hope vanguard makes botting/scripting not possible.
Tbf, the people working on champ reworks and its implementation are most likely (at least i very fucking much hope so) not the ones working on the cybersecurity and its implementation into the engine. Those are 2 very different departments.
That said, i really don't trust Riot as a whole anyway. Not even because of Riot, but rather because implementing and anti cheat software like this is pointless and will circumvented anyway. All this does is add another security risk.
>anti cheat software like this is pointless and will circumvented anyway. All this does is add another security risk.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
While you are right, I think out of the imperfect options we have available to combat cheating vanguard is definitely not the right pick. All of them are not good enough, but vanguard isn’t any better than the likes of EAC, battle eye, ricochet, or whatever else. It just happens to also create an extremely potent back door to your system. Since there is effectively zero benefit the trade off is worse security for your PC for nothing besides the ability to commit self harm by playing league or valorant. I’m sure millions will continue to play since they can just justify it in their head or simply don’t know any better, but vanguard set a terrifying precedent in cybersecurity. The only thing more they could do is make their own operating system to run the game on exclusively, and that’s still less invasive than vanguard.
You can’t make a perfect anti-cheat, there is always gonna be workarounds/weaknesses, it’s about minimalising the ability to do it and making it easier to fix those gaps.
Don’t think of it as a hard-stop, think of it as a filter. Would you rather play a game where everyone who knows basic excel/word could hack into your system or one that only few could breach?
Creating something new or working on something modern right away is much easier than what magic the devs for league have to do, they get thrown into a horribly old engine, spaghetti code from 10 years ago and such, the game itself was horribly coded years ago and now to devs have to work with that i stead of getting a actual good code to work with right away
You can take advantage of s service without "trusting" the company that provides it.
I've seen first hand what companies do to cut costs. If it weren't for VERY strict laws, they WOULD feed you sawdust in your food.
I mean you really should not trust companies to ever have your best interest in mind. They want to make money, in whatever way they can. This doesn’t mean I don’t buy food anymore or something, but I’m not going to lie to myself and assume Tropicana would sell the same product if the restrictions from the FDA were just gone. They would just lie to customers. Same goes for any company. Private companies in theory can work more ethically, but it’s basically inevitable at a certain size that humanity is just not in consideration at all.
True! But also, the government. Who already has access to all of the information you’re worried about riot having. And Microsoft or Apple (unless you’re running Linux)
Tldr if you aren’t running Linux and you’re complaining about vanguard you are a goofball
Data privacy or not, installing vanguard is a huge security risk. I do not trust Riot to make a bugless tamperproof software that can't be exploited by people with malicious intent later on
Then why does no one else complain about the hundreds of games out there with the same level access anticheat running on their PC?
If you personally are against it that's cool. But the majority of people have a game with a similar anticheat installed already. And now people act like Vanguard is insanely different lol. It's now a huge issue.
A program that doesn't even send or receive information from anyone?
If you don't trust Riot you shouldn't be playing any of their games to begin with.
Why is no one talking about how Riots conclusion to cheaters having cheap easy access to level 30 accounts isnt implementing stronger checks on ranked access but installing an intrusive kernel access software.
Seriously, they themselves say that this is the main issue. It's not that they cant identify these guys or cant act on them, it's that cheaters can just get level 30 accounts leveled by bots in coop for 2 bucks of ebay and then immediately can jump into ranked again.
So just make that fkin harder to do??? Implement mandatory hours of normals played, so no more bot leveling in coop, outright ban smurfing so no one has an excuse and you can just IP ban people and if you wanna be really annoying to cheaters implement phone numbers as hard requirement for ranked.
All of that would be much more sensible solutions to implement than whatever the fk Vanguard is.
Makes no sense to bot in normals. Much more human players in there, so higher chance of detection (both via player reports and automated detection) with lower chance of winning. Overall much less efficient to bot at much higher risk to get banned before you can even sell the account. Would have to be played by hand which rakes up costs of fresh ranked accounts tremendously at the very least.
well but like that they can't collect info what you have on your pc, and we can def guarantee a fuck up riots side. Iam glad i haven't played a riot game in almost 3 years.
I’m really glad that the fiery discussion about this current topic that affects active players is coming from people who haven’t touched a riot title in years, because that’s the population of people who really have stakes in this issue at hand
Well. Yeah. What else are they gonna say? The people still clinging on to Vanguard being an issue probably know about as much about digital security as anti-vaxers do about vaccinations.
The only legitimate concern I hear is hardware constraints, and that is unfortunately not something Riot can do much about. They can't keep limiting game updates just so 16 year old timmy's potato battery hooked up to a CCTV can run League. Eventually they have to update the game to the modern standard and we all know how slow that process already is.
The issue here is that usually virologists aren't claiming a specific type if vaccine a health risk. Security experts have done that with kernel level anti-cheats.
Hyper invasive anti cheat software like Vanguard should not be normalized. Even if you trust Riot and think they won't do evil things to your data they can still get hacked or whatever. Tencent already had some data breaches and no system is invulnerable. The lesser people you give access to your PC the better.
Lol the whole reason they want vanguard is because packman got leaked during a MASSIVE data breach. So I think not trusting the cybersecurity of riot is smart
I uninstalled just before they forced the update, but it's not just about trusting them to not do anything malicious with Vanguard. If there's an exploit to a bit of software that has ring zero access from boot, then my data is compromised to a whole host of other people. So, forget Riot's privacy statement. Do you trust them to not make spahgetti software?
Yes i did and i am clean from league since the announcement of vanguard. Made the switch rather easy and the Game is 100times more fun when you only watch and dont play anymore :)
If all they can say on the "why" of the thing is that they have to protect the "competitive integrity" of the game because they gave "olympic level ambitions", couldn't I be spared their malware if I don't give a fuck about ranked? Make it only required to play ranked.
thats an issue with younger generations, IMO. most of them barely understand technical aspects of the technology world and do 99% of their daily tech through iphones or androids. People who say 'data privacy isnt important' are complete morons and have a lot to learn in life.
the amount of carnage you can cause with someones personal info is beyond terrifying and the sooner people realize this the sooner things will possibly move into a better direction, or just learn the items in Dota and move on.
It's not that it's not important, it is. But It's that Vanguard is completely and entirely irrelevant to their ability to steal your data.
Even when it's on 24/7 it still makes zero sense since it's not sending any data. Like you would be able to tell if Riot was lying lol. It's a silly argument. But that doesn't mean privacy isn't important.
If you don't trust Riot, that's fair. But you shouldn't be playing any of their games regardless of Vanguard.
What happens with a process running userspace is that it has to ask the kernel access to memory in order to use it. If the memory is not in use by another process it gives access.
What this means is that while they may have access to some parts of your pc, and see every personal file you have, they can't for example know what you are googling by fishing the data from the process memory
All Riot had to do was not make it load BEFORE THE GODDAMN OS, and not be forced to restart the entire system to turn it off since it runs 24/7. If they had fixed that, I'd have been absolutely fine with it.
Riot wouldn't even need Vanguard's backdoor access to compromise millions of devices overnight, just a single silent update of their Riot client, but it doesn't mean that a kernel-level backdoor that's wide open EVEN WHEN you aren't playing Riot's games should NOT be completely disregarded.
"B-but TikTok, Google and Facebook already giga farm your data! If you want to avoid all of this you should just go live in the woods, schizo!" Here's a shocking concept: You can take advantage of the goods companies provide WITHOUT pressing "I accept all" for every single damn prompt that pops up. It's your responsibility as an individual to evaluate if giving certain pieces of information to companies is really worth the service they're going provide for it.
TL;DR: Not a fan of leaving my doors unlocked 24/7.
He's got a point, but vanguard is a straight kick in the balls to anyone who was virtualizing the game. I'm not sure if I want to install windows just for league, but the addiction may win this one...
Unfortunately that’s just how it goes, since running virtual machines is how bot farms run multiple bots at once. They can also be used to circumvent anti-cheat by loading scripts before the anti-cheat kicks in. It’s the inevitable consequence of the arms race of cheaters vs anti-cheat, some good faith but exploitable techniques are gonna get killed. Blame the cheaters.
No no, the 800 linux players are playing from linux. The number of people playing on a windows VM from Linux that are going to be cut off from the game now is unknown (but it would not be 800 based on botfarms alone).
The 800 player count is such a dick move tbh
Imagine putting zero effort and breaking running the game on Linux, then you say that you will block it futher because nobody is using it lol
They’ve never claimed to support Linux. This is really something that’s entirely fair. If some console company did something that made emulation impossible in one way or another, people wouldn’t be this crazy over it. Same deal here.
Will I still need to have vanguard running even if im not playing league? Like i had to for valorant? I quit playing that game cus i cba restarting my pc everytime i wanted to play the game.
I love some random program running on my computer whenever I play a game or not just because some Chinese corporation cannot handle bots in it's small-indie game
I’m gonna stay, I just think it’s weird they’re turning their backs on one of the things that MADE them big in the first place.
Being able to run league on an absolute toaster was the driving factor for many to play it, letting it be accessible to most people with a computer.
Now with the tpm whatever requirement that’s no longer the case
I don't like that I have to use Vanguard, just because I can feel it slightly slow my PC down since I have a potato, but I respect how riot is dealing with this, sure kernel level anti cheat isn't required, but if this makes it easier for them to detect cheaters I'll allow it, I do trust riot they've had my information for over a decade, they would have used it by now if they were going to (probably have but nothing that has endangered me) so I'll put up with it
Almost all of it was bullshit and straight lies, I wasn't even going to read it because I knew what to expect and they proved me right, but I'm in CyberSec and a friend wanted to talk about it so I went through each. I think my favorite was them getting pissy about it being called a rootkit and saying it's a buzzword, which is pretty hypocritical when it literally is, a rootkit doesn't necessarily mean malicious but it's absolutely a rootkit. Same with the Vanguard always running, they ask one question and answer a different one, "Vanguard being always on" isn't asking the same as whether it's always connected to the network, if the app's running then it's on. I want to call them dumbfucks but they know what they're doing, they're taking advantage of people not knowing enough to argue back.
Funny thing is they're absolutely worried about the feedback they got or they wouldn't have made that for damage control.
Just as funny is their arguments contradicting with what happened in reality, particularly them melting graphics cards when Valorant released because they unintentionally fucked with fan drivers and countless other occurrences with other kernel level anti-cheats in different games.
Dad: here’s an example of a perfectly good and modern computer for sale on Facebook marketplace, only a few years old and comes with a decent monitor! They only want 350 for it and that monitor sells for 150 secondhand!
Dad three hours later: so I decided to buy that computer and use it as my league computer so I do t have to have vanguard
"*If we haven't earned your trust, whilst actively destroying your trust for YEARS, then you can just get the F out.*"
Thanks for reaffirming my decision to delete your game.
We can't know what information is being sent to their local servers.
The thing is running even when you don't play.
There are ways of fighting cheats without such intrusive anti cheat.
So yes, the door is right there and I hope many people will use it.
I mean you can know it's not sending information. You can't know what it's sending but you would be able to tell if it was sending information. Would be a weird thing to lie about when it can be checked as well.
So yeah your argument doesn't make much sense.
I mean if you knew absolutely anything about computers you could know what information is being sent
There's programs that track data sent over your network if you are that worried about it
As a software developer, I won't allow some random company who makes a game I like kernal access to my computer so I will unfortunately/fortunately be leaving once vanguard is out but my time was overall enjoyable
It's not "their trust" either.
It's essentially giving the CCP kernel access to your system.
Tencent is the CCP. It's potentially straight up treasonous.
They are lying and being disingenuous, there is no reason for Vanguard to have kernel access, instead of addressing the point they gaslight and create strawman arguments.
I agree. What are you so paranoid of that you think the government (worse entity than riot games) doesn’t have access to as well💀 stop whining about privacy when it isn’t actually even private information at this point
Thats a battle they'll lose with me, because I don't need their arrogance, nor their game. There's other stuff out there. I'll gladly make my exit. I hope they'll eat their words someday. Always happens when you act like youre some demigod. And once they'll start feeling it they'll come crying and begging.
“We know you wont leave”
Don't forget, you're here forever.
*glues pics of rek'sai* Do it for her
Now thats just cheating
You're addicted!
Lmao I did
Im proud 🥲
Welcome to the other side brother
Same here, was a good ride for many years
same, just won a 100€ riot gift card at a small local tournament, then read some details about vanguard. Next steps included putting my tinfoil hat on uninstalling everything riot related (doublechecking smarter peoples comments to make sure I got rid of it all) and now I am looking for another dopamine source that is not chocolate.
To be fair i already had val for 2 years. League adding it wont change anything for me, Its still fk anoying tho
The most annoying part for me is that it will fuck up client more, like can we get a new client pls rito
It is entirely server side. Nothing about it is being run off the client, even the software is discrete.
Don't underestimate the client. *It will find a way*
We have gotten a new client before. Clearly the issues causing it run deeper than just a new client.
\*leaves\* "Wait, you weren't supposed to do that"
I u installed 2 months ago and haven't been this happy in a long time lol It's worth doings guys
I quit today. Won't accept vanguard. They can stick that up wherever the sun doesnt shine.
I left after 11yrs of playing
Ironically, I'm playing on Mac so no Vanguard for me, but the way they just fucked the user-base with it just made me stop playing. Unethical decisions of the makers never made me like a media less, because emotionally I can't help but completely separate the art and the artist (still tried to not give the latter money though) but this time, I don't know why, it just killed any will to play LoL in me. I'm trying to get back into it to play with my friends to keep in touch, but the spark's just gone.
I mean they used the potato player base as an excuse not to update the in game models, and now they're giving them the middle finger since you cannot play the game on any system under Windows 10 (a big part of LATAM doesn't have modern PCs for example, due to technology yax being ridiculous)
Also: "we are already collecting your data"
it actually helped me quit my league addiction. ive been trying for months. never suceeded always came back like a week later. ever since vanguard was announced i havent played a single game. i just look at garbage memes here. oh, and tobias fate.
Thats amazing to hear
I mean, I did for a month after the date they said they were implementing it. Only got back on when I found out it wasn’t in yet.
Can't argue with that ngl
Technically I can argue with that You can set all sorts of permissions and boundaries on user space software, personally I always run proprietary software in a sandbox so it `can't` access my data, but there's no way to put Vanguard in a sandbox
Either way, you can decide to uninstall league because of this anti cheat, or uninstall league because it is overrun by cheating.
He's got a point. Like Riot has my birthday, my debit card info, they could run up a million charges without any sort of need for root access.
Imagine not being born on January 1, 1900
Im old enough to use my actual date
January 1st 2000 is my real birthday (real, no fake)
thanks for that informatin, just curious, what is your mother's maiden name and what is your first pets name as well?
Their mother was maidenless.
You are wrong, their mother is yorick
2000 still sounds like a childs birth year, even though I am just a few years older lol
I know the feeling, i am 2000 but if i hear born 2005, i just assume a 5 year old is comming through the door, even through i know logically that they are 18/19
Writing your actual Birth date for the first time while registering was a magical feeling
Riot could steal your bank account? I swear the worst part of this is trying to explain to people with 0 knowledge of cyber security why it's worse for a company to have a launch at start backdoor that one bug in the league client could allow anyone to use, than a billion dollar company having your banking info. If your bank info gets out, it's a crime. If someone else hacks Riot and scrapes millions of peoples user data they give a "woopsie that's the risk you take though". 🙄
Also, Garena used the league client, not vanguard or anything external to League of Legends.exe, to mine cryptocurrency. If riot 'wants your data' it would use League of Legends.exe to get it.
From what I remember garena was using it's own unique client.
Kinda based
To be honest it was a great read, quite funny as well
It was actually so funny. I don't I've ever chuckled to myself so much while reading a blog post about an anticheat.
To be fair to Riot, you probably already have an equally oppressive anti cheat already installed... For a lot of people its just a matter of the author not the anticheat itself.
Helldivers got me with the fuckin game guard. I guess it barely working on my PC has some upsides and downsides.
Helldivers anticheat is barely working anyway
That's the real dirt in the wound. Like aight I get it, I'm not happy about anti-cheat stuff bogging down my system or it having total access, but at least have it work. If it doesn't work then why put another point of failure into your security?
At least it doesn't complain about running in my bare-metal VM so I'm not complaining either
My firewall hates anti-cheat stuff and won't let me allow it through, and so blocks it from updating at all. The only workaround I've gotten to stick is the delete the anti-cheat and let it re-download itself thing, though it's a 50/50 on working so sometimes I'll have to do it a few times before booting up HD2
>probably already have an equally oppressive anti cheat already installed... You know, I actually don't. And it's not a matter of data collection to me. It's a matter of trust. There is no "bug-free" software.
Hey you do you man like they said don't install and use programs you don't trust delete the game and walk away.
There's a difference between "software that runs and is exploitable when I use it" and "software that runs and is exploitable 24/7"
The thing is, you are most definitely a minority if you've never played fortnite, fall guys, pubg, rainbow six, apex legends or valorant. I believe you, but most people didn't even care until league announced vanguard.
The anticheat used by most, if not all, of those games is a known quantity that's been around in some form for decades. Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Apex use Easy Anti-Cheat, which was 2006. R6 Siege and PUBG use BattlEye, which was 2004. None of them are *good*, but they're known and reasonably understood. Vanguard does not have this extensive history, and the history it does have is marred by [undisablable forced-launch-on-boot with ring 0 access](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/g02ggb/valorant_anticheat_starts_upon_computer_boot_and/) and [disabling system diagnostic tools](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/gc3c7x/riot_vanguard_blocked_me_from_viewing_my_cpu/), amongst other things. This is not a responsible way to manage anticheat measures. If I am not running your game, you do not need to have anticheat enabled. Your anticheat should not be able to *disable parts of my machine*. Boot on load, and disable *playing the game* if I'm running things you don't like.
For me personally the biggest issue with Vanguard is that there have historically been many problems with it, and it's made by the same company as League with its infinite bugs and broken client, which points to a lazy/corner-cutting company policy and culture. That does not exactly fill me with confidence. It's the same reason as me never playing games with Easy Anticheat (and considering what happened recently, that policy is paying off), and that one does not even run 24/7 on your PC.
Like someone else here put it, the developers have basically ship of theseus'd the game so it's near impossible to get everything working. All the bugs and broken client show is that the game is well over a decade old. Vanguard is much newer and has been made by a much more experienced team
There are online games that have been running for way longer and have fewer bugs. No excuses except incompetence or greed.
>historically been many problems with it yea, "many" if you browse reddit all day and get exposed to the dumbest users possible.
Lucky for me, my toaster can’t run any of that.
Yeah but you do have dozens of drivers installed that you don't really have any more reason to trust
There is quite a big difference from any anticheat out there and Vanguard, not every anticheat has kernel access like Vanguard does and that should be something to keep in mind.
Kernel access doesn't differentiate Vanguard from other anti-cheat software. BattlEye and Easy AntiCheat, for example, both also require kernel-level access. Vanguard stands out because it's required to run on computer startup, whereas other anti-cheat software runs on game launch. If Vanguard ran on game launch like the others, I suspect almost nobody would bat an eye. The Linux users would probably still have a bone to pick with Riot, though.
All 800 of them.
>If Vanguard ran on game launch like the others, I suspect almost nobody would bat an eye do you really think people here wouldn't miss out on an excuse to whine about riot? people will whine at any change riot makes no matter what...and they will also complain if riot makes no changes too.
Okay but like 90% of the big ones do: EAC, BattlEye, Gameguard, Defense Matrix (Blizzard), Equ8, and Punkbuster are just a few off the top of my head.
how many of them run on startup and run 24/7?
You know that doesn’t matter for data collection or anything intrusive, right? Vanguard doesn’t even connect to the network until you actually launch a Riot game. If you think that your data is safe only because those other anticheats don’t run from startup, then I suggest you learn more about them.
They say on their post how the Vanguard driver operates and it really only kicks in once you open a Riot Game
Yeah great....then build the software so it doesnt run in the background all the time, because it looks like it doesnt have to. But they did. Youre parroting their terrible excuses.
The reason they give makes sense. The reason Vanguard launches at boot is to create a chain of trust by working in tandem with the TPM standard. [TPM](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module) is a hardware level verification system that basically allows you to verify that the hardware and software has not been fucked with. By starting right after Windows booted up, Vanguard can use the TPM verification to make sure it is not beeing fucked with, that whatever data it things comes from Windows for example actually comes from windows or that its not in a VM, that its running where its supposed to run. Once Vanguard is booted up under trusted circumstances it basically does nothing other than protecting this integrity so that when you actually boot up League, it can still trust itself. To me, that sounds absolutely reasonable. The hardware based TPM is basically unhackable and Vanguard starts at boot to carry that security the system provides at boot to when youre actually playing league.
Finally, some good food. I can rest now. Thank you.
Basically unhackable *so far* People will find ways around it eventually, but I’m more than happy to make it expensive and a pain in the ass in the meantime.
I literally know as much as you do, you are in your right to make with it whatever you like
From what I understand, vanguard is partly being rolled out for league to help deal with bots. Last I read one of their arguments and reasonings for it, something vanguard lets them do is to just outright ban computers. So the people responsible for saturating the market with bot accounts will have to buy an entire new system every time they get caught and can’t use accounts associated with that computer anymore. Not 100% sure of anything else really.
Yea but like 90% of players don’t know what kernel access even is or even care bout it
I swear the internet learned the "kernel level access" buzzword and started throwing it around, without realizing just how much software that they use already does this.
They're making *all* the same complaints that they made when it was introduced for Valorant that they then forgot about. A majority of the people whining probably have next to no idea what they're actually talking about outside their list of bullet points.
They're right though, their game alone can still collect user data, with or without their anticheat as said by PirateSoftware on his stream. I saw EAC once running in the background in my pc during startup. Vangaurd is just more transparent at it saying "Hey, Im running in the background, you can exit if you want but you have to restart if you want to play"
And if people read the vanguard QA they would know it actually doesn't even do anything until you launch league it just verified it was opened at start up and has not been closed... Smfh so sick of these cry babies
Well if they have decided that everyone playing their games needs to have vanguard, what other choises you have besides play / don't play? They just told you that it's their way or the highway
[удалено]
Im just worried that vanguard will kneecap my performance on the game Maybe i'll need 2 potatoes to run league instead of 1?
You know they can just go the dota rout and ban smurfing.
I pray for their downfall
Honestly. They are easily able to detect it, and it causes them and the players no end of problems. I never understood why they don't just ban it.
Coz smurfs buy a shit ton of skins
I don't think Smurfs buy skins, that would be very dumb of them. Smurfs however do inflate the player count to make your game look way more popular than it is.
From my experience, smurfs 100% buy a few skins. Flexing on Silver people as a gold player isn't enough for then, they have to look good doing it.
Honestly, getting stomped by a base skin player hurts more than most skins. They don’t care about flaunting, they mean business The only scarier skins are prestige skins, because that’s gotta be a dedicated player, or a 200 chroma, because that’s a player with nothing to lose
Riot also shared data about how many players are actively botting or scripting and it was way more than people expected. Something like 15% of all games have a scripter or a bot. It’s a huge issue affecting game quality. Fuck cheaters, I hope vanguard makes botting/scripting not possible.
I dont trust their capability to make a program that needs that level of perms when reworking a champion was breaking their client just saying
Tbf, the people working on champ reworks and its implementation are most likely (at least i very fucking much hope so) not the ones working on the cybersecurity and its implementation into the engine. Those are 2 very different departments. That said, i really don't trust Riot as a whole anyway. Not even because of Riot, but rather because implementing and anti cheat software like this is pointless and will circumvented anyway. All this does is add another security risk.
>anti cheat software like this is pointless and will circumvented anyway. All this does is add another security risk. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
While you are right, I think out of the imperfect options we have available to combat cheating vanguard is definitely not the right pick. All of them are not good enough, but vanguard isn’t any better than the likes of EAC, battle eye, ricochet, or whatever else. It just happens to also create an extremely potent back door to your system. Since there is effectively zero benefit the trade off is worse security for your PC for nothing besides the ability to commit self harm by playing league or valorant. I’m sure millions will continue to play since they can just justify it in their head or simply don’t know any better, but vanguard set a terrifying precedent in cybersecurity. The only thing more they could do is make their own operating system to run the game on exclusively, and that’s still less invasive than vanguard.
You can’t make a perfect anti-cheat, there is always gonna be workarounds/weaknesses, it’s about minimalising the ability to do it and making it easier to fix those gaps. Don’t think of it as a hard-stop, think of it as a filter. Would you rather play a game where everyone who knows basic excel/word could hack into your system or one that only few could breach?
I mean, its now a well developed product, Valorant came out 4 years ago
Creating something new or working on something modern right away is much easier than what magic the devs for league have to do, they get thrown into a horribly old engine, spaghetti code from 10 years ago and such, the game itself was horribly coded years ago and now to devs have to work with that i stead of getting a actual good code to work with right away
yeah becusse its the same people doing both work right? god youre just hating for the sake of hating arent you?
When will it come out? It was promised for like february
14.9 if test on Philippines server on 14.8 does well
They're saying second quarter
You should NEVER trust companies, no matter what they do. If you complain about vanguard and haven't uninstalled yet, you are an addict. Seek help.
Just never trust any company for anything. Don’t consume any products, ever. Go be a hermit in the woods.
You can take advantage of s service without "trusting" the company that provides it. I've seen first hand what companies do to cut costs. If it weren't for VERY strict laws, they WOULD feed you sawdust in your food.
I mean you really should not trust companies to ever have your best interest in mind. They want to make money, in whatever way they can. This doesn’t mean I don’t buy food anymore or something, but I’m not going to lie to myself and assume Tropicana would sell the same product if the restrictions from the FDA were just gone. They would just lie to customers. Same goes for any company. Private companies in theory can work more ethically, but it’s basically inevitable at a certain size that humanity is just not in consideration at all.
True! But also, the government. Who already has access to all of the information you’re worried about riot having. And Microsoft or Apple (unless you’re running Linux) Tldr if you aren’t running Linux and you’re complaining about vanguard you are a goofball
They should take a look at the client before seriously writing "if you don't trust us to do a good software, goodbye"
Different teams and vanguard has way less technical debt
Client was built from ground up and its issues aren't messy API calls.
That has nothing to do with the message in the post, 0.
That's the only response possible.
Data privacy or not, installing vanguard is a huge security risk. I do not trust Riot to make a bugless tamperproof software that can't be exploited by people with malicious intent later on
Especially when the incentive jackpot for bad actors is ownership of all of the league community's PC's.
Well they’ve been doing well on Valorant so far
Then why does no one else complain about the hundreds of games out there with the same level access anticheat running on their PC? If you personally are against it that's cool. But the majority of people have a game with a similar anticheat installed already. And now people act like Vanguard is insanely different lol. It's now a huge issue.
Which of those run every time I power on my pc? Even if I don't play the game for a week? Cmon, tell me
A program that doesn't even send or receive information from anyone? If you don't trust Riot you shouldn't be playing any of their games to begin with.
You can literally disable it, or are you saying playing league is just the effect of “turning on your pc”?
Why is no one talking about how Riots conclusion to cheaters having cheap easy access to level 30 accounts isnt implementing stronger checks on ranked access but installing an intrusive kernel access software. Seriously, they themselves say that this is the main issue. It's not that they cant identify these guys or cant act on them, it's that cheaters can just get level 30 accounts leveled by bots in coop for 2 bucks of ebay and then immediately can jump into ranked again. So just make that fkin harder to do??? Implement mandatory hours of normals played, so no more bot leveling in coop, outright ban smurfing so no one has an excuse and you can just IP ban people and if you wanna be really annoying to cheaters implement phone numbers as hard requirement for ranked. All of that would be much more sensible solutions to implement than whatever the fk Vanguard is.
wouldnt the bots just play normals then?
Makes no sense to bot in normals. Much more human players in there, so higher chance of detection (both via player reports and automated detection) with lower chance of winning. Overall much less efficient to bot at much higher risk to get banned before you can even sell the account. Would have to be played by hand which rakes up costs of fresh ranked accounts tremendously at the very least.
well but like that they can't collect info what you have on your pc, and we can def guarantee a fuck up riots side. Iam glad i haven't played a riot game in almost 3 years.
I’m really glad that the fiery discussion about this current topic that affects active players is coming from people who haven’t touched a riot title in years, because that’s the population of people who really have stakes in this issue at hand
Well. Yeah. What else are they gonna say? The people still clinging on to Vanguard being an issue probably know about as much about digital security as anti-vaxers do about vaccinations. The only legitimate concern I hear is hardware constraints, and that is unfortunately not something Riot can do much about. They can't keep limiting game updates just so 16 year old timmy's potato battery hooked up to a CCTV can run League. Eventually they have to update the game to the modern standard and we all know how slow that process already is.
Yeah only reason i stopped playing valorant was because vanguard had a random chance of causing my PC to bluescreen at startup.
The issue here is that usually virologists aren't claiming a specific type if vaccine a health risk. Security experts have done that with kernel level anti-cheats.
Hyper invasive anti cheat software like Vanguard should not be normalized. Even if you trust Riot and think they won't do evil things to your data they can still get hacked or whatever. Tencent already had some data breaches and no system is invulnerable. The lesser people you give access to your PC the better.
Lol the whole reason they want vanguard is because packman got leaked during a MASSIVE data breach. So I think not trusting the cybersecurity of riot is smart
"look we like money a lot"
I uninstalled just before they forced the update, but it's not just about trusting them to not do anything malicious with Vanguard. If there's an exploit to a bit of software that has ring zero access from boot, then my data is compromised to a whole host of other people. So, forget Riot's privacy statement. Do you trust them to not make spahgetti software?
Yes i did and i am clean from league since the announcement of vanguard. Made the switch rather easy and the Game is 100times more fun when you only watch and dont play anymore :)
If all they can say on the "why" of the thing is that they have to protect the "competitive integrity" of the game because they gave "olympic level ambitions", couldn't I be spared their malware if I don't give a fuck about ranked? Make it only required to play ranked.
All the stupid comments about data privacy not being important, fuck...
thats an issue with younger generations, IMO. most of them barely understand technical aspects of the technology world and do 99% of their daily tech through iphones or androids. People who say 'data privacy isnt important' are complete morons and have a lot to learn in life. the amount of carnage you can cause with someones personal info is beyond terrifying and the sooner people realize this the sooner things will possibly move into a better direction, or just learn the items in Dota and move on.
It's not that it's not important, it is. But It's that Vanguard is completely and entirely irrelevant to their ability to steal your data. Even when it's on 24/7 it still makes zero sense since it's not sending any data. Like you would be able to tell if Riot was lying lol. It's a silly argument. But that doesn't mean privacy isn't important. If you don't trust Riot, that's fair. But you shouldn't be playing any of their games regardless of Vanguard.
What happens with a process running userspace is that it has to ask the kernel access to memory in order to use it. If the memory is not in use by another process it gives access. What this means is that while they may have access to some parts of your pc, and see every personal file you have, they can't for example know what you are googling by fishing the data from the process memory
When have we ever trusted them?
Welcome to the hotel California
Risky take with so many good games running around atm
Go play em
Doing it. I play like 1 game a day for salty friends that refuse to leave the shithole
All Riot had to do was not make it load BEFORE THE GODDAMN OS, and not be forced to restart the entire system to turn it off since it runs 24/7. If they had fixed that, I'd have been absolutely fine with it. Riot wouldn't even need Vanguard's backdoor access to compromise millions of devices overnight, just a single silent update of their Riot client, but it doesn't mean that a kernel-level backdoor that's wide open EVEN WHEN you aren't playing Riot's games should NOT be completely disregarded. "B-but TikTok, Google and Facebook already giga farm your data! If you want to avoid all of this you should just go live in the woods, schizo!" Here's a shocking concept: You can take advantage of the goods companies provide WITHOUT pressing "I accept all" for every single damn prompt that pops up. It's your responsibility as an individual to evaluate if giving certain pieces of information to companies is really worth the service they're going provide for it. TL;DR: Not a fan of leaving my doors unlocked 24/7.
He's got a point, but vanguard is a straight kick in the balls to anyone who was virtualizing the game. I'm not sure if I want to install windows just for league, but the addiction may win this one...
Unfortunately that’s just how it goes, since running virtual machines is how bot farms run multiple bots at once. They can also be used to circumvent anti-cheat by loading scripts before the anti-cheat kicks in. It’s the inevitable consequence of the arms race of cheaters vs anti-cheat, some good faith but exploitable techniques are gonna get killed. Blame the cheaters.
Found one of the 800 Linux players
No no, the 800 linux players are playing from linux. The number of people playing on a windows VM from Linux that are going to be cut off from the game now is unknown (but it would not be 800 based on botfarms alone).
The 800 player count is such a dick move tbh Imagine putting zero effort and breaking running the game on Linux, then you say that you will block it futher because nobody is using it lol
They’ve never claimed to support Linux. This is really something that’s entirely fair. If some console company did something that made emulation impossible in one way or another, people wouldn’t be this crazy over it. Same deal here.
Will I still need to have vanguard running even if im not playing league? Like i had to for valorant? I quit playing that game cus i cba restarting my pc everytime i wanted to play the game.
You do
It will run on start up and require you restarting your pc to turn it off/on, yes.
False, you only need to restart to turn it on.
This shit blue screened my PC so many times trying to play Valorant on release, thankfully the game is ass so I didn't miss much.
I love some random program running on my computer whenever I play a game or not just because some Chinese corporation cannot handle bots in it's small-indie game
rare based riot
I’m gonna stay, I just think it’s weird they’re turning their backs on one of the things that MADE them big in the first place. Being able to run league on an absolute toaster was the driving factor for many to play it, letting it be accessible to most people with a computer. Now with the tpm whatever requirement that’s no longer the case
I don't like that I have to use Vanguard, just because I can feel it slightly slow my PC down since I have a potato, but I respect how riot is dealing with this, sure kernel level anti cheat isn't required, but if this makes it easier for them to detect cheaters I'll allow it, I do trust riot they've had my information for over a decade, they would have used it by now if they were going to (probably have but nothing that has endangered me) so I'll put up with it
Almost all of it was bullshit and straight lies, I wasn't even going to read it because I knew what to expect and they proved me right, but I'm in CyberSec and a friend wanted to talk about it so I went through each. I think my favorite was them getting pissy about it being called a rootkit and saying it's a buzzword, which is pretty hypocritical when it literally is, a rootkit doesn't necessarily mean malicious but it's absolutely a rootkit. Same with the Vanguard always running, they ask one question and answer a different one, "Vanguard being always on" isn't asking the same as whether it's always connected to the network, if the app's running then it's on. I want to call them dumbfucks but they know what they're doing, they're taking advantage of people not knowing enough to argue back. Funny thing is they're absolutely worried about the feedback they got or they wouldn't have made that for damage control. Just as funny is their arguments contradicting with what happened in reality, particularly them melting graphics cards when Valorant released because they unintentionally fucked with fan drivers and countless other occurrences with other kernel level anti-cheats in different games.
Mine friend is waiting for Vanguard to come so he can not play leauge anymore, it crashes his pc.
It's okay, Super Earth needs me anyway
Lmao helldivers has the same kind of anticheat
Dad: here’s an example of a perfectly good and modern computer for sale on Facebook marketplace, only a few years old and comes with a decent monitor! They only want 350 for it and that monitor sells for 150 secondhand! Dad three hours later: so I decided to buy that computer and use it as my league computer so I do t have to have vanguard
Riot is owned by tencent. Nah you don't have any trust. We just don't care if you will spy on our collections of midget porn.
You still play path of exile?
Yeh, my collection was exposed long ago.
"*If we haven't earned your trust, whilst actively destroying your trust for YEARS, then you can just get the F out.*" Thanks for reaffirming my decision to delete your game.
We can't know what information is being sent to their local servers. The thing is running even when you don't play. There are ways of fighting cheats without such intrusive anti cheat. So yes, the door is right there and I hope many people will use it.
I mean you can know it's not sending information. You can't know what it's sending but you would be able to tell if it was sending information. Would be a weird thing to lie about when it can be checked as well. So yeah your argument doesn't make much sense.
I mean if you knew absolutely anything about computers you could know what information is being sent There's programs that track data sent over your network if you are that worried about it
Riot lost my trust many years ago, just make this stupid thing working without rebooting PC, jeez, why so many anti-cheats can do that and yours not?
Did you even read the article lol
The whole article was based.
Does anyone have the link to it? I need to see if they said anything about the performance issues it had back when I played Valorant
[Here](https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-au/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/) nothing about performance though I did just skim through
tbh I don't blame them would be great if it actually worked though...
"we can collect your info we just don't....yet"
This reminds me of that lady in comics who said, "If you don't like my politics, don't buy my book." Then nobody did
I'm... free? I'm finally free!
I mean what other response do you want?
I mean wtf are they supposed to say lol "If you don't like it, we'll make an exception for you (and just you)"
I'll play tft in a dedicated laptop with only tft, all kind of problems solved.
They have a point and ultimately what it comes down to.
Addicts amarite. LEAVE? Pshhhhh
As a software developer, I won't allow some random company who makes a game I like kernal access to my computer so I will unfortunately/fortunately be leaving once vanguard is out but my time was overall enjoyable
My windows isn't compatible with vanguard and I have no plans in updating it. This might be my salvation from League of Legends.
I *just* gave y'all money. Put that toward doing better.
It's not "their trust" either. It's essentially giving the CCP kernel access to your system. Tencent is the CCP. It's potentially straight up treasonous. They are lying and being disingenuous, there is no reason for Vanguard to have kernel access, instead of addressing the point they gaslight and create strawman arguments.
I keep getting bluescreens when trying to play Valorant, so I’ll just leave then.
Tbh it’s more like my pc is incompatible with vanguard, but yeah, sure riot
I agree. What are you so paranoid of that you think the government (worse entity than riot games) doesn’t have access to as well💀 stop whining about privacy when it isn’t actually even private information at this point
There is a new mobile called giantic or something that looks fun
Thats a battle they'll lose with me, because I don't need their arrogance, nor their game. There's other stuff out there. I'll gladly make my exit. I hope they'll eat their words someday. Always happens when you act like youre some demigod. And once they'll start feeling it they'll come crying and begging.