Cheating in Valorant has taken root sooner than Riot Games could have predicted. Now, you have to follow the path of CS: GO to eradicate them.
It was obvious that at some point it would have to arrive. Cheating, nothing less than cheating to make it easier to win games, is a fairly widespread phenomenon in shooter titles. It already happened to CS: GO in its day (to all Counter, in general) and Warzone also suffered it in its flesh when it came out. Valiant was not going to be less, only that the real surprise is that his arrival has been more premature than any Riot employee thought.
The first to tell about it was Paul Chamberlain, programmer, and director of the Riot Games anti-cheat filter, who told Dot Esports that he “was optimistic” and estimated that the cheats would appear for the first time “two weeks after the beta” when in It was only a few days before they started working out the system to remove those cheats.
All those who used a cheat during the testing period of the title will not be able to enjoy it again. “Sorry, there is no second chance for cheaters,” said Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent.
A common problem in the genre
Intending to reinforce the method and algorithm that detects cheating, Riot Games awards $100,000 to all those hackers who can circumvent it, to polish the system to perfection.
In mid-May, the company reported that it had removed more than 10,000 accounts from the game thanks to the Vanguard system, which was so aggressive that it even gave problems to those who had not restarted the computer after installing it.
What the Valorant community is suffering from is quite common to the shooter genre. Counter-Strike has a real master’s degree in it since some tricks like automatic aiming ( aim bot ) or being able to see through walls have been used in Valve games since 1.6.
All the algorithms introduced by the giant owner of Steam ended up with holes that hackers took advantage of to update the cheats. The final solution was for the company to invest in technology to create an Artificial Intelligence that would adapt to each update of the game and be self-taught with different methods to detect it, studying for this the information about all the matches and the behavior of the players, something that Although it has not put an end to the tricks, it has managed to eliminate them to a large extent.
Vanguard y VAC
Precisely the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) is the tool that Riot was inspired by for its Vanguard system. The VAC was complemented by the incorporation of the Trusted Launch, another supplementary tool that will act as cyber police that analyzes every one of the applications, documents, and programs that come into direct or indirect contact with the title.
In case of detecting something that conflicts with the game’s good conduct program, a warning would be sent to those who use it asking them to stop doing so. Depending on the seriousness of the matter, they could even penalize you directly.
But the Riot Games system is even more powerful since it is capable of entering the heart of our computer, the kernel, and the HWID, that is, the code that identifies each computer.
Despite being more invasive, its potency is greater, which a priori makes it more effective. In fact, by going straight to the root, the only way for a hacker or cheater to get back into Valorant is to buy a new computer or change some of its components, a pretty expensive price to pay for cheating.
Even so, this system has also generated an intense debate, transferable not only to video games but to living in society: is it necessary to sacrifice part of our freedom and privacy in exchange for greater security? Chamberlain responded that the system does not work while the game is not running and that it does not consume resources, also facilitating the possibility of deleting or deactivating it when the user wants it.
Riot has been very involved and has been very transparent so that a very thorny issue like security does not go too far.
The truth is that cheaters are a trigger to generate a feeling of community. Players have in common the desire to kill them all because they don’t want anyone to spoil their gaming experience. For this reason, most do not hesitate to report when they perceive that someone is cheating. And with the rise of streaming and the death cam, identifying them is getting easier.
Cheaters are inherent players in all types of games: whether they are board games, traditional sports, or video games. It will be an obligation of the community and the companies to educate their players to make a defeat more attractive from which they can learn and to implement mechanics for the future in a victory with cheats.