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.
As a geopolitical side note to all this, there is a small but real chance that we may be going to war with (Edit: China) someday in the future, over Taiwan.
Do you really want an adversary that can potentionally disable a large portion of your populations computers in one fell swoop?
Edit: Because of Tencent’s ownership of Riot, which is a Chinese company.
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One can only hope. Back doors do exist, and seeing how parts of American politics these days seems to favor certain foreign countries, I’m not so sure. Greed seems to override oaths.
I believe it’s much more than a small chance, war over Taiwan is going to happen. Question is when, not if. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-air-force-general-predicts-war-china-2025-memo-rcna67967
But I agree, trading his computer control to China just to be able to play a game is ridiculous. Hopefully those who agree aren’t people that would matter anyway.
Even if none of those machines matter, a botnet the size of all valorant + LoL players has a lot of ddos potential.
Yeah you’re right
Just saw a Netflix movie about this a month or so back. Obviously the writing was a little embellished, but it was fucking terrifying to imagine something like that happening on a real scale.
If a security researcher finds and reports a vulnerability without permission, you would hope the company with the vulnerability would get in trouble, but instead the researcher gets in trouble and is and hassled by the government and the courts. Our government has already decided to sacrifice national security for the convenience of companies when it comes to security.
Riot? I don’t see a war with Riot being likely.
/picardfacepalm