Valorant devs claim cheat sellers are “misleading” players with fake cheats

Valorant devs have hit back at “misleading” sellers promoting “fake” cheat software that doesn’t work across social media.

Cheating can be an issue in any online game, and Valorant is certainly no exception. Thankfully, cheating isn’t nearly as common in Riot’s first-person shooter, largely thanks to the game’s Vanguard anti-cheat.

Not only that but the devs have put in continuous efforts to tackle cheaters, going to lengths to shut down cheat sellers by pursuing legal action.

Valorant devs slams “misleading” fake cheat sellers

In an anti-cheat dev blog on December 11, Riot’s Matt ‘K3o’ Paoletti gave an explanation behind why cheat sellers are able to advertise “undetectable cheats” across social media through advertising and live streams.

“You may have come across content on social media, advertising or live-streaming ‘undetectable cheats’ for Valorant, boasting their ability to remain undetected despite egregious cheating behavior,” the dev blog read. “With Vanguard, it seems like such obvious behavior should be detected, so why is it being actively streamed with seemingly no consequences?”

The Riot dev claimed that a large majority of these advertisements and live streams promoting cheating software are actually pre-recorded, and are still consequently banned quickly.

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Valorant bans peaked in the Summer of 2022, with close to 60k players being hardware banned.

“The reality is that the overwhelming majority of ‘livestreams’ are pre-recorded content,” the dev wrote. “Cheat developers are counting on views and misleading people on social media, to advertise their product.”

They added: “While these cheats are banned swiftly, it’s enough gameplay time to record footage and recycle it as an advertising loop. Unsuspecting customers will take these videos at face value, buy the cheat, feel savvy for a moment, and then swiftly banned.”

As promised, the Riot devs have gradually made adjustments and improvements to the Vanguard anti-cheat, with the latest update adding ‘VAN:RESTRICTION system’ — which adds additional security requirements for players that have been identified as meeting various factors of risk.