Cheating – and the anti-cheat systems game developers create to protect players from it – is always a hot topic. PC games takes place and is especially relevant in highly competitive PvP shooter games such as Counter-Strike or Assessment. The latter is actually going through a pretty big mess centered around anti-cheat, fueled by a controversial post from Riot Games, the studio behind it.
Tuesday, Valorant players began reporting that an update to Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheat software prevents DMA firmware — specially designed pieces of hacking hardware that plug into your computer and bypass kernel-level anti-cheat solutions — from working properly.
Even if the free-to-play tactical shooter doesn’t work or Vanguard is removed from your system, the software no longer works; the only way to get them working again on your computer is to do a complete reinstall Windows or any other operating system you are using.
“What’s the problem?” you might think. Well, Vanguard’s new efficiency against DMA cards can It was celebrated by the Valorant community, if not Riot is making a pretty bold statement: “Congratulations to owners of new $6,000 paperweight.”
This was posted on X (Twitter) along with a photo of dozens of DMA firmware cards strewn across an office, and many took the post to mean that Riot’s anti-cheat system was actually hacking and rendering useless the computers people were using when trying to hack Valorant. As you can imagine…that didn’t go over well. Not at all.
It quickly escalated. There has been a wave of scammers claiming that Vanguard “bricks” their computers, so let’s be clear: Vanguard does not damage hardware or disable your devices. The image we posted is a picture of the scam hardware devices that are being sold openly… https://t.co/dXb75Z91k9May 22, 2026
The post’s misunderstanding spread like wildfire and caused a huge uproar, prompting Riot to clarify things in detail. a long follow up post. “Well, this has escalated,” the developer wrote. “There has been a wave of claims by scammers that Vanguard ‘bricks’ their computers, so let’s be clear: Vanguard does not damage hardware or disable your devices.”
The studio went on to explain that Vanguard plugs into your PC’s Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) security feature to detect and combat devices such as DMA cards, preventing them from functioning when IOMMU protections are enabled. Disabling them will make the firmware devices work again – but you won’t be able to use them in those titles since Valorant and other Riot games require them.
“This means the cheat won’t work with our games, but your PC is not ‘bricked’. We will not and could not affect your PC’s functionality in any other way,” Riot said. “This functionality only applies to systems attempting to use DMA cheat devices, and players not using DMA-based cheat settings are not affected.”
Ultimately, this clears things up, although some still argue that Vanguard’s protections are too broad here and shouldn’t affect the piece of hardware someone buys. Others, however, find themselves eligible because the hardware is being used to violate Valorant’s Terms of Service. Some also expressed concern about potential problems with anti-fraud with false positives.
This is certainly a dark topic and the debate around it will continue forever. But at least I’m glad Riot took the time to make it clear to people that Vanguard isn’t hacking Valorant players’ PCs.
What are your thoughts on Valorant’s Vanguard anti-cheats and its preventing DMA cards from working without disabling IOMMU or reinstalling the OS? Let me know below.
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