Valorant’s anti-cheat measures are not trawling players’ PCs, claimed developer Riot Games, after players voiced concerns about the extent of the software inside their machines (via ScreenRant).

It may look like Counter-Strike crossed with Overwatch, but Valorant is offering something that will set it apart from its competitors and foster and support competitive players in its community. With “dedicated 128-tick servers for all global players, for free; a custom-built netcode in pursuit of precise hit registration; server authoritative game architecture and proprietary anti-cheat prevention and detection from day one,” the game is going to be “expanding upon the traditional tac shooter experience and bringing something new to the genre.”

The beta began not long ago, and only for those who had snagged a key from the developer. Viewers of “specific Valorant streams” were able to win a key for themselves; however, players are now finding fault with the anti-cheat system for Valorant. The system uses a kernel driver that starts up whenever the player switches on their computer. Yes, you read that right: the anti-cheat measures are active even if the player isn’t playing Valorant.

A portion of players aren’t very happy about this. Some accused Riot Games of spying, and others suggested that this driver could create new opportunities for hackers to trawl their machines for sensitive data. The studio’s head of anti-cheat measures, Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain, responded to the allegations. “Yes we run a driver at system startup, it doesn't scan anything (unless the game is running), it's designed to take up as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate to our servers. You can remove it at anytime,” explained Chamberlain on the game’s subreddit.

Players are able to uninstall the kernel driver whenever they want to, but this will stop them from playing Valorant. All anti-cheat software must monitor players’ activity, but the reach that Valorant’s anti-cheat system has within players’ PCs is slightly strange. Riot has already banned its first cheater, and will implement actual hardware bans for the cheaters that are yet to reveal themselves.

Valorant will launch for PC later this year.

