Valorant’s latest Vanguard update starts a legal debate as dev roasts hackers over "$6000 paperweights"
Riot Games has significantly shaken up Valorant’s esports community with a recent update to its Vanguard anti-cheat. External Direct Memory Access (DMA) MITM (Man-in-the-Middle) PCIe cards, such as the HEINO 2.0, allowed cheaters to secretly intercept incoming data from Valorant and use wallhacks, macros, pixel hacks, and trigger bots.
However, that chapter has come to an end, as Riot Games took to X and posted an unapologetic statement: “Congrats to the owners of a brand-new $6k paperweight,” referring to the HEINO 2.0, which retails for $5,900. Riot’s X handle also posted a photo of all the PCIe spoofing hardware on the floor, adding insult to injury where it was rightfully due.
For context, Riot’s latest Vanguard update figured out how to intercept and detect DMA cheating cards. These DMA cards cost thousands of dollars and can read and write to the game’s memory, bypassing traditional anti-cheat implementations.
A heavy-handed approach to anti-cheat?
With its latest update, Riot Games’ Vanguard patch implemented an IOMMU (Input-Output Memory Management Unit) restriction that effectively renders cheat firmware on storage devices—whether SATA or NVMe—unusable. It persists even after players close the game or Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheat.
The technical details were provided by an anti-cheat reporter called ogisdaDMA on X, who explained the extent of the impact:
“VGK suddenly triggered an IOMMU restart warning in-game, after which the DMA firmware became completely unusable, even without the game running or after uninstalling Vanguard. The only fix is a full OS reinstall.”
“It’s using IOMMU to create read blocks, which permanently break the majority of SATA/NVMe firmware once triggered. Even the advanced H2 (HEINO 2.0) board was affected. Some users replied to Riot, congratulating them on being the soon-to-be owners of a new class action lawsuit, as many are of the view that bricking someone’s hardware, regardless of hacking, should be illegal.”
That’s where engineer Daax chimed in and explained that what Riot is doing is perfectly legal. Daax stated on X: “You’re not going to suddenly have things on your PC stop working. The DMA device will stop working until you remove it. It will operate normally if you put it on a PC that doesn’t have the block.”
This development comes after Riot’s ongoing crusade to render hardware cheats unusable. Earlier in December 2025, the company collaborated with MSI, ASUS, ASRock, and others to patch firmware vulnerabilities that could allow DMA devices to slip through pre-boot protection systems. Riot Games is doing all this in the name of competitive integrity. However, the cat-and-mouse chase between Riot Games and cheaters could continue if hackers find other workarounds.
Source(s)
Add as a preferred source on Google
