Riot Games‘ kernel-level anti-cheat, Vanguard, has received an update that is allegedly altering system firmware to remove the ability of the user to access certain hardware associated with cheating.
Riot Games quoted one post discussing the anti-cheat, replying “congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight.” But how exactly does Vanguard’s new system make “paperweights” out of hardware?
CLICKBAIT Why does the article name itself that when it shows a tweet from valorant of them clarifying that they are NOT bricking your PCs???
I don’t like kernel level anti cheats, but I’m happy the people who decided to run Valorant with DMA cheats now have an expensive paperweight (the cheat device, not their pc).
They even say you can still use the cheat hardware on other games if you disable IOMMU on your motherboard, but you cant on valorant.
Slightly confusing wording, but I believe they arent bricking any hardware, just stopping it from working for cheating on their game.
This is a later clarification. First tweet just told people it would turn their device into “paperweights”, which is usually synonymous with “bricking” to a lot of people who mod hardware with custom firmware and such. And the original article talked about how it worked by messing with firmware, it was not even clear whether they talked about only the cheating device firmware or the usual PC components it’s connected on.
Now, with the clarification, it seems the thing they’re doing is way milder than what they hinted at and isn’t even doing anything permanent (I think?)
Sure, the article should be retitled following the new info though. Leaving it like that is dishonest.