Riot Games Now Requires Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat Software for League of Legends, Following Valorant's Implementation

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 763 points –
Riot Requires Kernel Level Anti-Cheat Software
tuta.com

Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.

Summary:

The article discusses Riot Games' requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users' devices.

The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players' activity and restricting free speech in-game.

Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.

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The Chinese government wants to install a root kit on your PC

If you meet someone playing these games then they are the dumbest people you have run into

If you meet someone playing these games then they are the dumbest people you have run into

Hello, nice to meet you. I am trying to get away from it, but it's hard. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. BUT I am playing at lot less. Having to dual boot to play one damn game is gonna help too.

Dual boot would only protect you if have your other side encrypted or are monitoing it to make sure the other partition is never mounted.

What you need to play games like this is a side-piece computer on its own LAN.

If you believe the game to be malware you should not play it. Even if it doesn't have a kernel-level anticheat.

A binary on Windows can do pretty much whatever it wants.

Agreed. But I was more highlighting what lengths you need to go to protect yourself from a rootkit. I thought the parent mentioned dual booting as a sandboxing measure. I could have been mistaken.

2024 still on the red scare, for an american company nonetheless, lmao.

China isn’t leftist or communist

Tencent isn’t an American company

2024 still on the red scare, for an american company nonetheless, lmao.

To be fair, there is a small but real chance that we may be going to war with them someday in the future, over Taiwan.

Do you really want an adversary that can disable a large portion of your populations computers in one fell swoop?

Says the guy with a username as primitive as boobies lmao

Or they dont give a fuck what the chinese government thinks about them

Respectfully, I have to correct you. This argument is not correct way to think about privacy.

For Example :- You don't care what I think about you but if I ask where do you live, what is your bank ac, what messages and email you send and to whom, etc. You will not provide me those details even though you don't care what I think about you. Similarly a player might not care what they think about them but the mere collection of user data is bad for the player.

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No, they might be ignorant of how bad this is though

It is at a level where you would write to your representatives to ban it. I assume you are ignorant of rootkits since you mentioned “what they think about you“ rather than “owning your pc”

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