Riot Games is positioning itself Valorant, its new competitive 5v5 tactical shooter, to take on games like CS: GO and Overwatch in the esports space. In addition to providing 128 tick servers and a large server network to try and ensure the lowest possible pings for players, they also take the game's anti-cheat measures very seriously.
Riot takes a three-pronged approach to tackling cheating at Valorant, using the metrics below to try and ensure a fair gaming experience for players.
Resistant to the "Fog of War" wallhack
Valorant will employ what Riot calls a "fog of war" system, which will remove player locations from game data stored in memory just before line of sight contact. This means that Wall Hacks, which traditionally searched for in-game data to find player location information and would display it on the user's screen via an overlay, won't be able to do so.
Authoritative game architecture on the server
All Valuing matches will be authoritative on the server, meaning that all game tweaks and parameter permissions occur on the server side. This means that players can't change anything on the client side, which is traditionally how cheats like quick hacks or teleport hacks work.
Exclusive cheat detection
Valorant will run two different forms of anti-sabotage systems. The first is the system that was developed for League of Legends, and the second is a new anti-cheat system called Vanguard that will allow what Riot calls an “ever-evolving detection method”. Vanguard will also allow Riot to instantly ban cheaters the moment cheating is detected, and they won't have to wait for a reporting system to point out cheating cases.
If you are playing in a game and the cheat is detected by the game, the cheating player is banned, the game is over and is immediately forgiven for all players in the game who were playing legitimately. This means you won't have to sit in a lobby with a cheater on the other team, or yours, for fear of a starting penalty to take a loss on your record.
That's all we currently know about the comprehensive anti-cheat measures that will be in place at Valorant from launch day.
We'll update this article with any future information Riot publishes on the game's anti-cheat measures.
