Since it's Closed Beta launch a couple weeks ago, VALORANT's hype has been extraordinary. It has continuously reached over a million viewers on Twitch, and the demand has called for Riot Games and the VALORANT team to release more and more keys in an attempt to satiate viewers and upcoming VALORANT hopefuls.

However, along with the growth and the hype comes bugs and hackers. But Riot Games was assured that their anti-cheat software, Vanguard, would eliminate the threat of hackers infiltrating their game.

But their system may have unintended consequences, causing security concerns of its own. Vanguard boots at system start up, and remains on at all times, constantly processing user data to ensure there are no cheats being installed or enabled before getting into game. That constant screening has many worried about the security of their personal data.

Riot Games is confident in their system, of course, posting a message of that confidence on April 17th. "The bottom line is we would never let Riot ship anything if we weren’t confident it treated player privacy and security with the extreme seriousness they deserve," they said. They go forward to list how and why they're confident, and how we as players and users of their systems can and should be confident as well.

Riot ensures it's users that "Vanguard does not collect or process any personal information beyond what the current League of Legends anti-cheat solution does," (which isn't specified in this post.) But more specifically, Riot Games claims they have no access to the data processed by Vanguard itself, stating, "The driver does not collect or send any information about your computer back to us."

Furthermore, Riot Games has offered up to $100,000 to anyone able to find security flaws in Vanguard. "We want players to continue to play our games with peace of mind, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is. If you think you’ve found a flaw in Vanguard that would undermine the security and privacy of players, please submit a report right away and you may be eligible for a big bounty payout."

To get more of the nitty gritty, you can read the entire breakdown of their philosophy and Vanguard's Architecture on their post. And to really get down and dirty, you can read their super techy version released a couple months ago.

To claim the bounty, one only needs to hack Vanguard and send in a detailed report to Riot Games' security team on any security flaws it may have. Otherwise, all VALORANT players should feel confident in the anti-cheat system, and confident that outside users have no access to VALORANT players' personal information, though Riot Games themselves may need to do more to prove their own lack of information gathering. 

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