In the latest major action against Valorant cheaters, Riot Games has announced that almost four thousand cheating accounts have been permanently banned in one fell swoop. The public announcement is only the second ever from the team responsible for Valorant’s Vanguard anti-cheating system.
3,700 Valorant Cheaters Perma-Banned by Vanguard
“Taking action to remove a large amount of cheaters from VALORANT permanently,” reads yesterday’s statement from the official Riot Vanguard Twitter account; “Players who have submitted reports against these individuals will be notified if they are currently logged on. Thank you for helping keep VALORANT a safe and highly competitive gaming experience.”
Below the official statement, Riot’s Phillip Koskinas went on to confirm that 3,707 accounts are no longer active. This is the first major wave of permanent bans which Riot has announced since the launch of Valorant. One similar large wave did take place prior to launch, however, while the game was still in closed beta. That first major wave of bans was significantly larger – banning 8,873 cheating accounts in one go. Regardless, this new wave is certainly another positive step in eliminating cheating from the game.
Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheating system, combined with their zero tolerance policy for infractions, has seemingly been quite effective in combating Valorant cheaters thus far. (Although, as with almost any online game, dealing with cheaters is a never-ending battle.) Fans can only hope that this new wave of bans also serves to deter other players from resorting to cheating themselves, for fear of receiving a permanent ban.
Certainly, banning thousands of accounts all at once sends a much stronger message than banning individuals. Riot’s anti-cheat lead, Paul Chamberlain, has previously said that; “sometimes it’s better for us to delay so that cheat developers don’t learn that they’re detected for a while”. As such, carrying out these major purges may also be a good strategy for wiping out the most widely-used cheats. After all, doing it this way gives the cheat’s makers no warning and no time to find a workaround. Hopefully, this strategy proves effective long-term at removing cheaters from Valorant’s online ecosystem.