Riot still needs your help with cheaters

Sadly, cheating or hacking is an inevitable problem that all game developers have to deal with. With cheat software constantly evolving, it is a battle that can never truly be won.

Since the closed beta launch back in April, Valorant has been criticized for its overly intrusive anti-cheat system. Vanguard has undergone a number of changes since but people like YouTube and Twitch star Tyler “TrainwrecksTV” Niknam are still having issues.

As well as Vanguard’s automated banning process, the anti-cheat team at Riot also perform regular manual reviews. Team lead Paul Chamberlain discussed the importance of player reports in a recent blog post.

Chamberlain explained that reporting suspicious behaviour helps in multiple ways. Firstly, they tell the anti-cheat analysts who to look at. If someone has been reported a bunch of times over multiple matches, they probably need to be investigated.

It doesn’t end there though. In situations where player reports uncover a cheater who went undetected by Vanguard, the system can then be updated and improved for the future.

Finally, reports can also directly assist the automated processes. “The Vanguard backend uses reports to decide whether or not a player should receive additional scrutiny, such as a higher intensity game integrity scan” revealed Chamberlain.

As well as this, the blog post provided some data to put Valorant’s cheating concerns into perspective. For example, “97% of players have never even received a single report”.

Building on this, “only 0.6% of players have received more than 1 cheating report and only 0.3% have received 3 or more”. Doesn’t sound too bad, but let’s not forget, there’s a whole lot of people playing.

Whilst many accounts are banned automatically without being reported, Chamberlain maintained that these reports are invaluable. So next time you see something fishy, don’t ignore it, none of us like cheaters.