Competing against other players online is a bigger part of video gaming today than it ever has been.
So it's no surprise then that fair play online is being taken more and more seriously,
both by gamers who view cheating as a huge impediment to their experience,
and by developers who are pushing anti-cheat software to keep players honest,
and of course prevent gamers from just quitting a game because they're frustrated with how many
cheaters there are on servers. But these anti-cheat mechanisms have come with some issues of their
and notably, the solution implemented by Riot Games for their hit shooter Valorant
has really ruffled the feathers of many in the community.
So why can an ostensibly good thing like anti-cheat software be so controversial?
And what made Valorant such a target for rage specifically?
The answer to this question largely comes down to how exactly anti-cheat software works.
You see, many solutions essentially function as drivers, and in case you don't know what those
are, they're pieces of software that allow your hardware devices to talk to your operating system.
But hold on, we're not talking hardware, we're talking a video game.
So why would anti-cheat software need to take the form of a driver?
The reason that developers do this is because drivers often operate in kernel mode.
The kernel is the core part of your operating system that interfaces most closely with your
hardware, and as such, programs running at the level of your kernel get special privileges
and can access parts of your computer that other applications cannot.
It's common for people who write cheats for video games to also implement them at the kernel level
in order to bypass restrictions. So the response from software developers often needs to be
at that level as well in order for them to be effective. And indeed, many anti-cheat implementations over the years have taken the form of kernel-level
drivers, including easy anti-cheat and battle-eye, which are used by Fortnite and PUBG respectively.
But while the rationale for running anti-cheat software at the kernel level
might make sense, it still presents some special issues.
One of them has to do with system stability, as giving any kind of software that much
privilege over your whole system can lead to errors or crashes if it isn't coded well.
Kind of like putting a teen driver, no pun intended, with a learner's permit behind
the wheel of a McLaren. Not to mention that poorly coded kernel mode drivers can leave
your computer very vulnerable to malware that takes aim at core parts of your operating system.
But while some of the major anti-cheat solutions that work on a kernel level
have actually been fairly well designed and haven't given users too many high-profile issues,
others have made headlines for the wrong reasons, such as when one notable anti-cheat service,
the ESEA client, was exploited by a developer back in 2013 to unwittingly turn gamers' PCs
into crypto miners. And Valorant's implementation, called Vanguard, has raised some additional
concerns. One is that it's always running. Unlike other popular anti-cheat software that
only runs when you start up your game. Vanguard, well, it likes to boot at boot time. And originally,
Riot Games didn't even offer a way to turn it off. The latest version allows you to turn it off,
but if you want to play Valorant, you actually have to reboot your PC in order to launch Vanguard
again. Pretty annoying. And while Vanguard isn't the only anti-cheat solution to run at boot,
it's been criticized for being especially invasive, as the driver is built to block programs that
deem suspicious, yet it's affected applications gamers commonly trust like CPU temperature
monitoring software. Vanguard also has issues not giving players proper notifications when a
legitimate program has been blocked, blocking hardware like keyboards, and even causing
blue screens of death. Remember what we said about how kernel mode software can make your system
unstable? And to top it all off, there's also the argument that placing anti-cheat software
at the kernel level will entice cheat makers to operate at that level more often as well,
with all the security and stability issues that presents. Of course, that isn't unique to Vanguard.
In fact, Doom Eternal's anti-cheat software, Dunuvo, was recently pulled due to fears stemming
from the fact that it too operates at the kernel level. But big name titles like Valorant do tend
to set trends for the industry, for better or worse. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked
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your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future.