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.
Correct me if I'm wrong but if it can't run Valorant then it can't run the game in general, so you'd be just as well off by not playing Riot games on a Windoze or Mac machine as well.
Not supporting a game is not a reason to switch to linux, and the more games aren't supported, the less people are gonna switch. The Linux zeal on this site is comical.
"Haha my OS cant play games that have millions of concurrent daily users each!"
It may sound silly, but for a lot of people being unable to play games like Valorant, Warzone or League of Legends it's actually a feature and not a bug or a problem.
OP was saying something along the lines of 'if Valorant can't run on Linux, it's a sign your privacy is much less compromised.' After all this community is specifically about privacy.
Ima tell you right now 90% probably more of the val community wouldnt play the game on linux or switch regardless of if it ran or not so it so it doesnt really matter
Meh just another crappy rootkit game that doesn't even fully prevent cheating at the cost of undermining system security. But for worse or worse, the entire playerbase doesn't care about their data being bought and sold for immense profits they get 0% of.
Riot Games Now Requires Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat Software
In other words, a Chinese rootkit. Wouldn't want a Chinese backdoor in my kernel, but that's just my personal opinion. If you want one, go ahead, install this garbage.
I don't support this existing, but does the nsa collect and sell all your data to third parties and make a shitload of money doing so? Because everyone else definitely does. I don't know how difficult it is now, but some number of years ago you could request a copy of all the data some of the social media sites have on you and it's fucking scary especially with how much is deduced, presumably from piecing together info from your entire social network.
You know, Valve once considered making an entire OS to prevent cheating. I'd assume something like SteamOS, but incredibly locked down and designed for playing Valve games. Obviously that never got past the idea stage, but disregarding the truckload of issues with that idea, one big one is that you could use either physical cheating tools, by messing with the direct hardware inputs, or run it in a VM. Basically, unless you have a player in a locked-off room, with a pc, keyboard, and mouse provided by you, and the pc running your own locked-down OS... well, someone's gonna figure out a way to cheat.
That's not to say that anticheat can be ignored entirely, but since there is no remotely reasonable state which could eradicate cheating entirely, you need to find a happy medium of not "infecting" the player's pc with a new backdoor, because even if you're not malicious, someone else will be, and nothing at all. Something that has a minimum level of invasiveness with a maximum level of cheating prevention, at least filtering out basic script kiddies.
The problem with that is, nobody cares. Basically nobody even knows what a "Kernel" is and what "Kernel-level" means and implies, so it's just some weird anticheat for them. Also, as long as DRM doesn't interfere with their playing experience, they don't care either. Barely anyone will even notice if a few frames are missing, because Denuvo is chilling in the background, keeping the game "safe".
We are a subset of privacy-minded people in a subset of somewhat knowledgeable gamers. Losing us as customers doesn't matter in the slightest to the devs/publishers, and nobody else will make a fuss, or at least they'll not stop spending money.
My biggest issue wouldn't even be the kernel level access, but the fact that the stuff is written and tested by no one in particular. The possible bugs are the issue for me.
If that thing would be bullet-proof, hackers trying for years to break it without success, yeah. Ok. I could be convinced. If it is cracked after two days already... Then nope.
Same. I miss the IP (especially Arcane) & the friends I made playing LoL—and I think I could have a good time living in the world, but not at the cost of compromising device permissions. Same reason I refuse to use my shitty banking app if they try to tell me what software I can & can’t run/install or how to operate the device I own.
This. An always-on rootkit is worlds different in terms of privacy and security than most conventional ones like EAC.
(Not like conventional ACs are good for these things either, of course. But it is many degrees less invasive.)