It is a bad time to be a cheater in League of Legends, as Riot is now hauling out the big guns and implementing its “first ever Hardware ID bans” to combat the growing number of cheats in high-Elo games.
“Now that Vanguard has had a bit of time to roll out, we’re starting to target more cheats that we weren’t able to action on in the past,” the League developers said today on X (formerly known as Twitter), reflecting on the developers’ intention to address the cheating issue in the game. “These new waves will also include League’s first ever Hardware ID bans, raising the action weight against cheaters.” Riot went on to highlight their continued attempts to ban cheaters’ hardware, which should prohibit the guilty parties from playing on the same machine.
According to Riot’s current data, the developer began implementing hardware bans on May 15, making them the second most common type of ban in the game, following Vanguard bans. This stringent precaution comes after the makers revealed on April 11 that 10% of the game’s Elo games included cheats. These are primarily the higher levels, such as Master, Grandmaster, and others, demonstrating the widespread prevalence of cheating in professional games.
Vanguard is Riot Games’ kernel-level anti-cheat tool that runs in the background when you play your favorite Riot games. VALORANT has been utilizing the technique to ban cheaters since 2020, with great success.
It is not all praise for League’s anti-cheat system. Moments after being live, some Reddit and Facebook users reported that it was “bricking” their PCs and causing a slew of problems. Later, the developers on Reddit responded to the queries publicly by saying they “have not confirmed any instances of Vanguard bricking anyone’s hardware.”
Nobody wants their hard-earned matches destroyed by an unskilled cheater. Traditionally, cheats would bounce from one account to another after being banned, posing a threat in online games. However, hardware restrictions strongly prevent players from attempting this harmful loop by immediately banning their system. It will be fascinating to see if the direct hardware bans stay effective while not harming other gamers’ PCs and maintaining competitive integrity among players.