Riot Games bans first cheater from Valorant

Unfortunately, cheating is an almost unavoidable aspect of video games. There are certainly ways to make it harder, respond to it quicker and punish culprits more efficiently, but people will always try. Riot Games were well prepared for potential cheating in Valorant, but it’s sad to see them have to ban someone so early on.

Programmer and anti-cheat lead for Valorant, Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain took to Twitter to report the news. “Well it sucks, but today we had to ban our first cheater” he confirmed, adding that it looks like more bans are on the horizon.

Responding to a thread in the r/VALORANT subreddit on the subject, Arkem shedded some more light on the situation. He explained that Riot are in this fight (against cheaters) for the long haul and will be quick to handle any new methods of cheating as and when they appear.

In a shooter like Valorant, the most prominent hacks are usually those which allow players to see their enemy’s location, even through walls and other surfaces. The Fog of War system in Valorant tries to combat this by masking each players location unless they are directly in line of sight or just around a corner from you. Arkem revealed that this has been working as planned so far.

It’s a shame that anyone feels the need to cheat in a videogame, but we all know it’s always going to happen. Therefore it’s good to see how well equipped Riot are to deal with the problem, and minimise the impact it has on the rest of the player base.