6 mo. ago • 98%

Vanguard just went live and LoL players are already claiming it's bricking their PCs

dotesports.com Vanguard just went live and LoL players are already claiming it's bricking their PCs

The anti-Vanguard uproar from the League community has been very swift and very loud.

69 comments

Wow, who could have anticipated that kernel-level anti-cheat was a bad idea? It's like people haven't been warning that giving an increasing number of programs that level of access might be a Bad Idea.

79
Kernel-level anti cheat is spyware, say it with me everybody. Complain on steam about it. Post this nonstop. This standard is NOT OK and needs to change and that's the only way it might.

56
- Why complain on Steam? If I remember correctly, League of Legends is downloaded through its own installer and it's completely separate to Steam
  
  32
  
  It used to be on Steam
  
  2
  
  Send Riot Lyte a mad email then.
  
  0
I would never let some random anticheat code have kernel access. Games are demanding something crazy, and users are stupidly letting them get it.

52
- It's not just silently installed by Steam, or something, they have to explicitly confirm they accept it? I don't play this game, I am curious if players are unaware or actively stupid.
  
  8
  
  Riot's games can only be played with their own launcher, so no steam. They give a big message about "now installing vanguard, our anticheat," then inform you to reboot to finish the install, since vanguard is the only ring 0 anticheat that puts itself into the kernel start up, always running.
  
  9
  
  Yes
  
  5
  
  Some are unaware, but most are actively stupid. Bring this topic up in any helldiver's thread and you'll get down voted to oblivion.
  
  4
  
  I I stalled helldiver's and didn't realize I was doing that.
  
  I'm not exactly savvy though.
  
  3
The first time I installed Vanguard, for the Valorant beta, it decided to disable my mouse and keyboard on each boot.

43
- Well, you can't cheat if you can't do anything
  
  16
- This is why I absolutely refuse to install Valorant (and now LoL) - I could somewhat understand if an anticheat refused to boot up the game in question if something triggered it, but it going massively outside of its scope and wantonly disabling or killing other processes is just nuts to me.
  
  9
- To be fair, if they were typical RBG mouse and keyboard, and you used the brands software to change their settings, it blocked that software. Those programs were absolute dog shit in terms of security. I have no idea if it forced them to make better software, or Riot just started to allow them. Regardless it's all pointless because Vanguard has been defeated. Imagine making ring 0 anticheat that loads on boot, and it still isn't good enough, fucking LoL pun intended.
  
  3
  
  Both had optional software, and I only used the keyboard. The software didn't have to be running for either to work, it was only to configure it and then it wrote the configuration to onboard memory. It was the generic mouse and keyboard input drivers provided by Windows that was blocked and it affected a pretty significant number of users.
  
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26
- Someone is having me “fix their pc” to work with it and they understand the problem but say “i only play a little” and “it’s really important to me”
  
  They asked about getting a separate computer just for the game
  
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  Permanently Deleted
  
  0
- What stops consumers with bricked PCs from claiming the max amount in small claims? That would drain funds quick
  
  1
This is either the final nail on the coffin for playing league on linux or it will motivate linux devs to figure out a way around it. I don’t play league but I did enjoy playing TFT with friends always on Linux.

23
- TFT can at least be played via android (or emulator)
  
  5
  
  Yeah I guess waydroid is probably the way to go for TFT on Linux
  
  2
- I doubt there sustainable way around a kernel anticheat, that will not get you banned eventually. People either have to quit or dual boot.
  
  2
I installed Fortnite to check out the LEGO mode without realizing EAC was a rootkit and the next Windows update bricked my PC.

22
- I've never had any issues with EAC, it's probably one of the least invasive kernel-level anticheats out there (with vanguard being the most invasive)
  
  4
  
  Have you actually audited its behavior? Both are proprietary and any kernel module is inherently dangerous.
  
  5
Even ones like easy anticheat have given me problems where if a game didn't exit properly my whole system got bogged down and required a restart.

17
Others simply dubbed it “malware” and declared they would be quitting League until the program stopped breaking PCs.

Silly that malware is okay once it stops interfering with your day to day

15
One of my favourite games to have kernel level anticheat is Helldivers 2, and I think it's definitely caused a few issues for me.

14
- Helldivers 2 works on Linux even with the anti cheat unlike Valorant so there must be some differences there.
  
  18
  
  Riot's Vanguard is the only one that needs to start with boot, and always run in the background. Others can initialize and close when the game is done, IIRC. Which is why they can work with proton/wine.
  
  12
  
  Supposedly it falls back to usermode anticheat on linux. That's what I heard but there wasn't a source, so could be BS.
  
  4
- It's really sad that they chose to implement it. I would've loved to play Helldivers 2 but I just refuse to allow them that level of access to my device, especially for a game that isn't even competitive.
  
  15
  
  That's where I'm at with the game.
  
  Like yeah it looks fun, I'm not willingly installing malware. Especially after the apex legends debacle.
  
  6
  
  Thankfully on linux we have tools to heavily limit it's access such as firejail. It doesn't just get unrestricted root access
  
  5
  
  Their explanation for it makes sense though. They were running into the problem that a player could cheat and progress their games faster, etc. Since HD2 is essentially a MASSIVE, single DnD campaign that every player is a part of, those cheaters would break the campaign progress and ruin it for every single other player.
  
  They also include shortcuts to install and uninstall only the anticheat. So you can remove it immediately once you finish playing.
  
  4
just play other mobas

11
- There’s realistic only DotA and I can understand the reluctance, the two games are massively different, League is much more suited for casual play.
  
  7
  
  Ahaha no I swear to god Dota 2 is ridiculously fun
  
  In LoL you play the same game over and over again.
  
  Yesterday on dota I planted trees with my friends to hide and wait for people to come to ambush them lol
  
  You can do all sort of funny stuff, TPing people in your base etc… everything is OP so you don’t feel like you have no agency. You feel like it’s just your skills that are lacking!
  
  7
  
  HOTS is actually in a released state
  
  It’s what the former pros/high elo lol players go to
  
  1
I loved the way CS:GO1 had an anticheat program called Overwatch. If you are experienced enough and a trusted user, you can review games that players have reported and ban the cheaters if you deem them cheating. I don't know if csgo2 has this but I haven't seen it so far.

7
what about making actual authoritative servers?
that would break most cheats except *-bots

also there's usually no need to replicate the entire game state on all clients, some details like movements of players out of view can be omitted (ofc this doesn't apply to lol but whatever)

7
- But that`s haaaaaaard tho… :(
  
  5
- I've never played it, but aren't League of Legends servers already authoritative? Also, I'm pretty sure it would only deal with certain kinds of cheats. An authoritative server won't be able to prevent a player from using an aimbot, for example, since nothing says that a player isn't allowed to have super accurate aim. The server can't tell if they are cheating or just insanely good. Nevermind I missed your sentence mentioning *-bots.
  
  I wonder whether, even with an omnipotent anticheat software installed, cheating would still be possible by having the router manipulate your packets on the way to the server (ie. having all the *-bot work being done on that device). I imagine TLS could maybe thwart that attempt, since the router can't decrypt the packets, but I don't think it's really a problem since the client could also just provide it with the unencrypted packet and the server's public key, so that the router may fabricate the packets. On the other hand, anticheat software would be aware of that since the client has to send those extra packets, but how could it know that those packets are being sent for nefarious purposes and not just simply some other normal software doing it's thing?
  
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