this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024

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Riot Games Now Requires Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat Software for League of Legends, Following Valorant's Implementation (tuta.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10958052

Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.

Summary:

The article discusses Riot Games' requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users' devices.

The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players' activity and restricting free speech in-game.

Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.

all 21 comments

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Looks like I can't play league anymore I switched to full Linux recently

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's really unfortunate. Wonder if there will be a workaround or if that's even possible. I'm not keeping a windows boot just for League of Legends tbh

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I've never run a virtual machine I wonder if that would make it possible. But yeah I don't want to dual boot

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago

Um...hell fucking no?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Hey, Dehydrated. I really wish you wouldn't spam the same article in 20 places a few seconds apart.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I mean isn't that how it's supposed to be done? You post to all relevant communities? Lemmy even has a feature to deduplicate posts in your feed that have the same link URL, to reduce the repetition in your feed

If it's still annoying then maybe the software needs to handle it better, because I don't think only posting to a single community is good. Everyone else gets left out, especially when you consider some communities will be on defederated instances.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

As long as there are multiple communities for the same topic, users are going to post the same links to multiple communities. The software has to handle it better. I submitted a proposal to solve it, but one of the lemmy devs have said explicitly that they won't implement it and they don't think duplicate posts are an issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think keeping the comments separate is probably still a good thing. There might be another way to improve it

I think once we get a system for multi-communities or grouping communities, we could revisit this issue

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

is cheaters in lol this bad? are there more cheaters compared to for ex.: dota? and if yes, why? does the lol game implementation allow it?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

If I’ve understood correctly it’s partly scripters/cheaters, partly botting that are the main problems right now, in high and low ranks respectively.

According to some of the discussions I read there’s been a sharp increase in cheating/botting ever since the League source code was leaked.

[+] [email protected] -15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Is the cheating in LoL that bad from somebody who regularly plays at least middle level ranked games? I am very glad to have it for Valorant compared to the mess Counter-Strike is in. Kernel level anti-cheats are a must nowadays to lift the barrier to entry which excludes quite a bunch of cheaters.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

cheaters control the hardware, there will always be workarounds and cheaters will end up cheating anyway. the financial incentive is there: cheaters pay good money and even subscriptions for cheats.

legitimate players on the other hand get a slower game, invasive and insecure anticheat, and is more limited otherwise (eg. linux cant play lol anymore, etc)

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do you know how clean Valorant is to play compared to Counter-Strike? Definitely worth it. Shooters just don't work anymore without kernel level anti-cheat. The demand is real that even third party add-ons are used to play with them, e. g. Face It for Counter-Strike. It doesn't stop all cheats and never will, but makes cheating expensive enough to exclude many.

The famous Escape from Tarkov Wiggle video should put it into perspective.

The Linux - FOSS user group of Lemmy is obviously mad, but that is the new reality.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

no because it doesnt run on my machine and i dont want riot poking around my computer but i dont remember seeing a cheater in csgo in a loong time. i havent played cs in a while, but kernel level anticheat will eventually be cracked if it isnt already, it is inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah no thanks I don't think companies should hand out rootkits to unsuspecting users.

Of course this is capitalist laziness that will envelop the entire proprietary games industry, the only way to kick out cheaters is better net code and actually scaled moderation, but those things cost money and maintnence (as well as dedicated playerbase).

To think otherwise is to boot lick these multi-million dollar corporations.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What a terrible, uneducated comment. The anti-cheat solutions cost developers tons of money. Better netcode to disable wall hacking? Do you just randomly create arguments for your point? There is already as much engine and netcode obfuscation as feasible, strategy games render only few units into the fog of war. You need first a big enough barrier before you collapse the labour intensive moderation which can yield false positives.

Something something capitalism bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Whatever you say, at least I'm not the one advocating for people to install spyware from any Tom, Dick and Harry that claims it will "fix cheating"

The other solution is to simply not play those games. It's bad enough that the game itself is nonfree, but if it has DRM/relies on a nonfree network service then it should be ostracized.

But those things require having a spine, so I doubt you'd like them.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago

It is not a claim, it is a fact the cheating hurdle is higher. You clearly are not the target demographic, not affected by cheats and not interested, so you really should not tell others what to do with their hobbies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Kernel level anti-cheats are a must nowadays to lift the barrier to entry which excludes quite a bunch of cheaters.

$40 ain't much of a barrier to entry

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Counter-Strike 2 cheats run for $10 per month and Valorant is not just higher priced but sometimes listed as Out of Stock, so I guess certain providers got striked down.