Riot remotely disables users’ hardware with new Vanguard update

Riot Games’ notoriously invasive Vanguard anti-cheat software finds itself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons once again. Recently, it straight-up prevented a Deadlock player from accessing their game for seemingly no reason. In a new X post, Riot Games shows off what looks like a pile of DMA (direct memory access) FPGAs and calls it “a $6k paperweight”.

DMA cards plug into a motherboard’s PCIe slot, and can be used to bypass Vanguard’s protection by directly accessing Valorant’s memory from outside the game. They’re usually hard to detect and somewhat expensive. However, the latest Vanguard update can now detect DMA cards and trigger an IOMMU (Input-Output Memory Management Unit) restart. Vanguard forces Windows to cut off the DMA device's access by flagging it as unsafe. The only way to access it again is to do a full OS reinstall. 

At first glance, this might seem like a legitimate move to combat the ever-evolving cheating scene in competitive games like Valorant. However, it also sets a horrible precedent for game companies, who have no business disabling user hardware remotely—even if it is being used for malicious purposes. As stated above, Vanguard has been known to malfunction, and it is only a matter of time before a false positive ends up bricking someone’s hardware.

Needless to say, Riot’s little stunt has received tremendous backlash from the community, and rightfully so. Cheating in video games is unethical and downright scummy, but it's not illegal. But remotely disabling user hardware, albeit temporarily, is very much the case. Furthermore, the resulting OS reinstalls could result in data loss. It is only a matter of time before the lawsuits start flying, and it’ll be interesting to see how Riot tries to justify its outrageous practices.