Shinwrathen

I haven't installed the game due to concerns over the anti-cheat. (And it doesn't help that it won't run on a vm)

I have two questions:

1) Are you planning to create an option to uninstall it when one installs Valorant? (Talking about Vanguard, I think since it only supports one game it should go away when you remove said game)

2) I've had a shitty experience with Halo Master Chief coming with EAC without letting me know in advance during download or during installation. Does your download / install process make it clear to the players that Valorant is bundled with extra software that also has a kernel driver? As a fellow gamer I imagine you also don't miss the good 'ol StarForce days.

Thanks for the time you took reading and possibly replying to someone that isn't a customer.

Hi, thanks for the questions!

1) We designed Vanguard for multiple games so the thought was that it should be as independent as possible which is why it has its own entry in Add/Remove Programs and doesn't uninstall with the game. We're changing this and soon uninstalling the game will uninstall Vanguard too (or at least ask about it).

2) It wasn't ready for the first week of closed beta but we have a notification pop-up that says that Vanguard is being downloaded/installed in the patcher now. In an upcoming version the pop-up will be expanded to include a link to an article with more details.

xRobert1016x

Hey Arkem, would I be banned for injecting cheats into another game while not playing valorant or having it running? I play on HvH servers in csgo.

While I don't think you should be cheating at other games (well other multiplayer games) we won't ban you for things you do outside Valorant. In some cases the game might not run if generic cheating tools are open but we don't want to ban players unless they are actually cheating.

Shinwrathen

Thank you.

This is something I've been saying for a while here and there and I know a handful of people also echoed this and agreed so it would be nice to have the answer a little more public, but I won't complain either way

Stay safe and have a nice weekend.

Hey Shinwrathen, I can speak to those.

1.) Absolutely, I would like to have the Vanguard system & kernel component uninstalled whenever you don't need them. Was working on the plans this week with our platform team. It is something that was on our back log and in hindsight maybe should have been there for beta release. I understand how it could add to some fears.

2.) We do have a notification on Valorant install that Vanguard is being installed and are making some updates to provide more detailed information. Like what is being installed, troubleshooting steps and how to uninstall.

PM_ME_UR_BCUPS

In a largely different vein from the other questions I've seen -- for those of us who are glad that Riot is taking anticheat seriously, when can we hope to see this implemented with League as well?

We might use Vanguard on League someday but no plans at this point to use the kernel component. I don't see a need for it right now. Currently we got cheating in League to the point where the the average ranked player does not see a scripter all season. My dream is for Valorant to get here. :)

mvujas

This post is a great place with ton of valuable information for anyone looking for facts and arguments. Unfortunately, I fear many people complaining aren't going to listen, I feal like most of them complain for sake of complaining and somebody just manipulates them for their own good. What insults me so much is that everyone keep repeating that the software runs on kernel ring, yet I bet easily more than 90% of those don't have clue what kernel even means...

The only way to shut everyone would probably be to publish the code, yet it would highly compromise the security of the software and I guess would go against the rules of company since Riot doesn't seem to advocate opensource code, correct me if I am wrong.

At last both arguments concerning security and privacy could be used for any software running in the forementioned mode and I have yet to see so much complaining about anything like the last few days about Valorant...

EDIT: text formated to be easier to read

The only way to shut everyone would probably be to publish the code, yet it would highly compromise the security of the software and I guess would go against the rules of company since Riot doesn't seem to advocate opensource code, correct me if I am wrong.

We have open-sourced things in the past, but this is business secret sauce and likely will not get open-sourced.

Newfypuppie

How many wrinkles does your brain have

https://i.imgur.com/XPZhgGW.png

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This is a excellent idea! It is actually similar to something that we talked about implementing during Vanguard development. At the time I just prioritized other work over this feature... Maybe a bad call but I do generally prioritize security, effectiveness, compatibility & performance over features. However, giving players the power to turn the driver off is something we can & should deliver on. For the risk averse I get how uninstalling every time you finish playing is not optimal. 

d4rkph03n1x

Hey, I recently sent a message in discord to a Riot member regarding the use of vulnerabilities that apply to all video games on a network/hardware level, which includes 1. the parsing of network data in order to get game data, 2. the usage of HID devices in order to simulate mouse movements, and 3. The combined use of those two in order to parse network data and create a HID controlled aimbot that is fully hardware-sided and done 100% externally.

Theoretically, you could just use OBS to "stream" a game to another computeror application, and create a low-latency aimbot that uses a PID loop with the error being the distance from the center of the screen/crosshair to the pixels that make up the image of a head. You then could use a raspberry pi, usb rubber ducky, or any other badusb/programmable HID device (there are thousands) and create an aimbot that goes off of the distance between the head and the crosshair.

If I created a proof of concept of the screengrab-based or a network-based method, and sent that in, would I be able to recieve any of the bounty, or would that not be in any of the bounty sections due to being completely external and 99% impossible to detect?

So this sounds like an anti-cheat issue rather than a Vanguard driver issue (which is what the up-to-$100k bounties are for). We do accept anti-cheat issues in our bug bounty program. If you can create a POC, please do submit it, although I can't guarantee you'll get a payout until I actually see the POC.

alpha_berchermuesli

i know you are not here to talk harassment, but i was wondering how you treat verbal abuse, harassment and other, uncalled and unnecessary, toxic behaviour. Is the option a placebo, or are there consequences to such behavour/reporting such players?

There are consequences. Players are who are verbally abusive, harass etc will get penalized if you report them.

The in-game report tool is enough in most cases but if you're super concerned you can clip a video of the behaviour (assuming the behaviour is done over voice) and send it to player support

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Vanguard does not do cheat detection unless VALORANT is running.

it’s minecraft lol. i want to use a client in minecraft

Dude, creative mode exists

Cr4gor

Vanguard seems to make it impossible to play Valorant on linux. It does not work on vine or a VM because of the anti cheat. Are you just going to neglect linux gamers or are you going to make the game/anticheat run natively on linux at a later time?

We don't officially support Linux play of any of our games at this time.

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Everyone who plays VALORANT on their work machines has Vanguard installed.

BertDeathStare

And props to you guys for the communication, this thread turned into a bit of a Q&A. A bit off topic but the games the devs did against Shroud and his team were really fun to watch. The devs showed there's a high skill ceiling and now I'm already excited for future tournaments. It'd be cool if you guys did more of that, devs vs players. That's pretty rare I think, that the devs of a game can go up against really skilled players and slap them up and down. Do any of those devs happen to stream? I kinda wanna see their perspective and hear the voice comms between them :P

I'm not sure but you can always check out their twitters to find out more info, starting with Pwyff, Penguin.

CthulhuLies

I was talking with someone and they were very aggressive about the fact that you haven't named the auditors auditing Vanguard. Is this information you can share?

We can't disclose them unilaterally. We'd have to consult with the parties before we made any announcement. So not yet.

Same--Advice

Ultimately, who owns the product that you're developping. You? Riot? or Tencent?

What would happen when who ever own this product decides on some changes.

Riot owns everything we make.

The distribution of our games is sometimes delegated to partners, like Garena, who also own the publishing piece in those regions.

EnglishDentist

Why not ? :c

Reasons that, as a security engineer, it's probably not my place to disclose as it's not my area of expertise.

Varonth

Your bounty program is nice, but how exactly are you going to ensure that everyone who has Vanguard on their computer has the latest version?

Does it auto-update? Is it just manual updates?

Both don't sound too great. I can understand an anti-virus program asking once in a while to restart my computer for an update it loaded in the background. But that does not sound like something an anti-cheat system for a computer game should do.

But manual, for example when the user starts the game sounds not so great either. Imagine a game like WoW asking to restart your computer after updating.

And worse than that, what about someone who does not actively play at the moment. Or worse, uninstalled the game which still keeps Vanguard installed. Is it just sitting on a users PC, unpatched, for months?

Nowhere does it mention how you plan on distributing security patches for Vanguard, and that should be mentioned somewhere shouldn't it?

Also tagging /u/RiotArkem as I don't know who of you is responsible for this type of problem.

Vanguard checks for updates when a player tries to launch the game (it's done as part of the game update check). A player can't launch the game without the latest version.

If there was a serious security problem that required people to update or remove Vanguard we would try and get the message to everyone. We would also take whatever other steps we could to protect people from a vulnerable driver such as asking Microsoft to blacklist the driver and revoking the certificate.

LowSeason3

couldn't this also mean that riot has worse programmers that allow so many vulnerabilities to slip through?

it could also mean that maintaining the infrastructure for one of the biggest games in the world is fraught with risk and that we pay generously on bug bounty :)

Panaxzz

I don't wanna sound annoying as I have requested this many times but I'll say it anyway. Sorry in advance if you've seen this point repeated before:

Hi, I'm a DevOps Server Software Administrator working mainly remotely. My system runs Arch. I play games in Virtual Machines with mounting a graphic card to that specific Virtual Machine. I currently can't play Valorant due to this. Are there plans for a Linux version of the game or being able to play it in a Virtual Machine? If no can I please have a reason why? Thanks for reading my question.

There are currently no plans to support Linux or to add support for Virtual Machines. We don't support virtual environments for a wide range of security issues. However, that does not mean we have not thought about ways we could.  Some of the best Security Researchers I know and work with prefer to run only Linux, and emulate Windows when needed. So Linux & Wine support is an on going passionate discussion but I am sorry I can't make any commitments at this time. 

raulgbcr

I don't really wanna push or throw any shit over this, but could you give us an aproximate ETA of when this feature will be added?

Also, I know its probably out of question, but any plan on supporting linux players with vanguard? Currently wine does not support most of the kernel driver features, so probably will need some kind of reimplementation or native support for linux in any way, I know linux players would probably represent 1% or less of your player base, but we do still exist...

I can't give a timeline as we are still in QA but my hope is that we will have something in days, not weeks. The experience might look a little rough at first but we will improve it over time.

No plans for Linux or wine support at this time but it is an ongoing discussion.

raulgbcr

I don't really wanna push or throw any shit over this, but could you give us an aproximate ETA of when this feature will be added?

Also, I know its probably out of question, but any plan on supporting linux players with vanguard? Currently wine does not support most of the kernel driver features, so probably will need some kind of reimplementation or native support for linux in any way, I know linux players would probably represent 1% or less of your player base, but we do still exist...

Update is live check out Nemi's post for more information. https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g9aoap/upcoming_vanguard_changes/

raulgbcr

Wow that was quick, thanks for letting me know! Seems to be working pretty fine, thanks for that <3

<3