Riot Games Addresses Backlash to Vanguard Anti-Cheat Program
Riot Games has publicly addressed the backlash to its custom in-house anti-cheat program Vanguard, today declaring just 0.3 percent of League of Legends players have actually reported any issues.
Developer Response to Community Uproar
Following a huge uproar in the League community in the hours after the kernel-level Vanguard program went live, the developers moved to allay concerns by sharing a lengthy response on the League subreddit on May 2. In the response, Riot suggested most preliminary issues have been related to “common error codes” or driver incompatibilities rather than anything more nefarious.
Assurance from Riot Developers
In particular, the devs firmly stated they had not yet “confirmed any instances of Vanguard bricking anyone’s hardware”—a direct rebuttal to the majority of claims that have swept over social media since yesterday.
Monitoring Vanguard Performance
“Overall, the rollout has gone well and we’re already seeing Vanguard functioning as intended,” Riot’s anti-cheat manager Matthew “K3o” Paoletti explained to players. “We’ve already seen a hard drop off of bot accounts in the usual places, and we will continue to monitor this.”
Early Statistics and Ban Numbers
Early Vanguard numbers include around 200 games terminated and more than 1,500 offending players automatically banned in the first 24 hours. This is all while the new League anti-cheat program is still rolling out in monitor mode—only the most egregious cheaters have been on the opening-day hit lists.
This breaking story is being updated.