In response to recent frustrations that Riot Games’s anti-cheat software Vanguard, currently being rolled out for League of Legends after successful use in Valorant, is “bricking” computers, the anti-cheat team took to the League of Legends subreddit to address things.
The official post explains that the causes of bricking, or full-computer crashing, were unrelated to Vanguard itself being installed, and are instead more about how players configure their computers, causing unusual interactions with Vanguard.
Still, some players in the comments say that Vanguard hasn’t been detected properly in many games, causing them to leave and forcing a reboot—a process long enough that the team has already lost by the time the player returns. Staff replied to some technical concerns in the thread.
The devs point out as well, regarding concerns about screenshotting, that Vanguard only screenshots the League of Legends client when necessary, and not the full computer.
Players also point out that they’d rather not have Vanguard on, as it causes unusual interactions between League and Valorant clients, as well as other drivers. One of the official staff, ItsGamerDoc_, says an on/off toggle suggestion will be passed on to the rest of the team. However, this has been one of the complaints about Vanguard since its launch about four years ago (as well as the game working on a kernel level, meaning having access to nearly all details about it).
A subreddit moderator has also compiled answers to some of the more pressing questions, such as kernel-level implementation and ARAM/unranked Vanguard use.
