Riot Games has launched an important update to its Vanguard anti-cheat system, which should go some way to reassuring users concerned about potential privacy threats.
Ever since Riot Games introduced an anti-cheat system called Vanguardusers complained that this system threatens their privacy. The controversial Vanguard requires users to access the operating system’s kernel, but it’s a particular pressure that Vanguard must be running at all times – regardless of whether you have Riot Games running or not.
Fortunately, the outcry bore fruit and Riot Games finally decided to reduce Vanguard’s restrictions. From today Vanguard no longer needs to be active while Valorant or League of Legends are not running, i.e. they will not run together with Windows. It will be activated only after starting the games.
However, for this to be allowed, the user must have Windows 25H2 or later, with UEFI SecureBoot, TPM 2.0, VBS, HVCI and IOMMU enabled. Riot says that roughly 35% of their users meet these conditionswhile others will need to update the system and/or tinker with the BIOS to enable this. Those who don’t want to, or don’t have the conditions to optionally turn Vanguard off, will still have to use it the entire time their PC is on.