Riot Games has responded after reports claimed that Valorant’s Vanguard anti-cheat system was “bricking” or damaging player PCs. The company has officially denied the rumors and clarified that the software “would not, and cannot, impact your PC’s functionality” in any way.
This confusion started after a Vanguard update focused on Direct Memory Access (DMA) hardware devices. These are expensive external devices used by advanced cheaters to read a PC’s memory while avoiding normal software detection systems. After the update, Riot Games’ X (formerly Twitter) account posted a photo of cheat hardware with the message, “Congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight.” The tweet quickly spread online, and many users misunderstood it as Riot admitting that Vanguard was making entire computers unusable.
However, Riot Games later explained that Vanguard does not damage hardware or disable PCs. The company said, “The photo we posted is a picture of cheat hardware devices that are sold explicitly for cheating in VALORANT (not normal PCs or PC components). Through our latest updates, Vanguard now makes those devices worthless for VAL, but does not in any way brick PCs or PC components or PC software.”
They added, “Our latest update enforces standard platform security features, like the Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU), on accounts identified as using Direct Memory Access (DMA) cheating devices. These protections are already part of modern systems and when enabled, they block DMA cheat devices (such as those shown in the photo) from accessing memory in downstream applications, like our games.”
The company further explained that if cheating software keeps attempting to access protected memory after Vanguard protections are activated, the system may create hardware errors or instability. Riot described this as “expected behavior under IOMMU” security protections. “This functionality only applies to systems attempting to use DMA cheat devices, and players who are not using DMA-based cheat setups are not affected,” they said.
Finally, Riot Games concluded by saying that it will continue improving its anti-cheat system and will try to be as transparent as possible about how the system works.
