Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.
Summary:
The article discusses Riot Games’ requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users’ devices.
The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players’ activity and restricting free speech in-game.
Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.
An issue of users having blocklists is that they may use it against people that are merely good at playing the game.
I suppose an open source game would have no choice but to have whatever feature users are willingly to addon to their local game.
I can definately see that being a problem, all systems have their downsides. A system like that though I feel is necessary in a game with decentralized online play.
For centralized ones it doesn’t make as much sense since those already have anti-cheat (automated or human run) and bans from the service, which aren’t perfect either, innocent people often get banned when they didn’t deserve it, it’s just not as apparent because in those communities anyone banned is witch hunted afterwards, there’s a lot of appeal to authority in those communities.
All user crowd control systems, even the lack of one is going to have negative effects to their usage, even if they aren’t apparent at first.