First, it’s a multibillion-dollar tech company at a time when anti-corporate sentiment is all the rage. Riot has faced a few challenges to its reputation in recent years. Which brings us back to the issue of trust. ESEA apologized and donated all of the money to the American Cancer Society. The developer generated nearly $4,000 off the backs of unsuspecting players’ GPUs before he was caught. This is despite the fact that in 2013, an ESEA developer used the software’s kernel access to turn players’ computers into a secret, large-scale bitcoin mining farm. Meanwhile, services like FACEIT and ESEA have “always-on” drivers, though after years of use and updates, they feel less invasive than Vanguard to many players. Other popular systems like DayZ’s BattlEye and Fortnite’s Easy Anti-Cheat also use kernel drivers, but they only run when the game is active. Riot isn’t the only company targeting the deepest depths of your computer with its anti-cheat software. Just three weeks after Valorant and Vanguard went live in a closed beta, Reddit was packed with criticism and conspiracy theories relating to Vanguard’s omnipotence. The changes were in response to persistent online skepticism of Riot’s new, kernel-level anti-cheat system, and they were intended to give players more control.
I talked with him and Riot’s chief information security officer Chris Hymes two days after their teams announced a handful of updates to Vanguard. That’s Paul Chamberlain, security and anti-cheat lead on Valorant. “It's easy to go, ‘This is new, why should I trust it?’ But it's hard to get a satisfying answer because at the very end of it all you should trust us because we're trying to do right by you.” So, with the launch of Valorant and Vanguard, the competitive shooter’s always-on anti-cheat system, the question is clear: Do you trust Riot Games? You’re assuming they’re not installing secret spyware, rummaging around in your files, or selling your keystrokes to the highest bidder.
With each click of the OK button, you’re placing implicit trust in whatever company or person is distributing that software. Every time you install a new program on your computer, you’re taking a risk.
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