Valorant’s anti-cheat system has lots of players concerned about privacy, but it isn’t actually collecting information about players, at least according to developer Riot Games. The issue arose shortly after Valorant launched in closed beta, when security-minded players slammed Riot for what they called Valorant’s invasive anti-cheat driver.
Riot’s latest game Valorant is a competitive hero-based shooter that plays something like a mix between Overwatch and CS: GO. Even though it’s only in closed beta at this point, Valorant is already one of the most popular games on Twitch, pulling in incredible viewer numbers in its first week. The fact that watching Twitch streams is the only way for most people to get access to the Valorant beta certainly has something to do with that, but plenty of fans are happy just to spectate.
Of course, all that attention means that Valorant also has a large player base to manage, some of whom are willing to cheat to get a win. Just days after its closed beta started, Valorant banned its first cheaters. This led to interest in how Valorant’s anti-cheat system worked, and players discovered that it used a kernel driver that starts whenever a player with Valorant installed turns on their computer, not just when they start the game. Players were understandably nervous about the idea, and some took to Reddit to air their concerns about how much access that gave Riot to their systems. In response, Riot’s head of anti-cheat, Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain clarified that it doesn’t monitor anything except for the game and doesn’t send information back to Riot’s servers.
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.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Arkem’s explanation didn’t convince everyone that this was the right solution to Valorant’s cheating problem. Some Reddit users flat-out said that they didn’t believe that Riot isn’t spying on them, while others pointed out potential security flaws that the system driver could open up. Arkem did point out that the anti-cheat can be disabled or uninstalled at any time if players are uncomfortable with it, but doing so will keep them from playing Valorant.
Walking the tightrope between protecting players from cheaters and respecting their privacy can be a difficult task for developers, since any form of anti-cheat software requires some level of monitoring of players’ computers. Riot’s anti-cheat system for Valorant is certainly more invasive than most, but that’s exactly what makes it effective. There’s always the chance that Riot could explore other options if players make their concerns heard enough, but for the time being, Valorant players will need to make peace with the anti-cheat system.
Valorant is in closed beta now on PC.
Source: RiotArkem/Reddit