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Riot was "caught off guard" by Valorant cheaters

Riot was "caught off guard" by Valorant cheaters

Riot Games has claimed it was "caught off guard" by how quickly cheaters turned up in Valorant.

Speaking to IGN, the company's anti-cheat head Paul Chamberlain explained that its new software offers protection mechanisms and allows the firm to "respond quickly to emerging threats."

"Vanguard has made it easier for us to fight cheats in two ways: first, the protection mechanisms in Vanguard make it more difficult and time-consuming to create cheats," said Chamberlain.

"Second, Vanguard was designed in a way that lets us respond quickly to emerging threats; we don’t need to wait for a game update to update our anti-cheat systems, so we can roll out new protections and detections as soon as they’re ready. We’ve built Vanguard to be an ever-improving platform, rather than a once off product, so from here Vanguard is going to continue to improve."

Chamberlain claimed he didn't think cheats were going to become a problem immediately. He thought the team would have at least two weeks before cheaters began to cause problems.

"To be honest I was caught off guard by how much interest there’s been in the game and how quickly cheat developers turned their attention to us," said Chamberlain.

"My estimate before launch was that we’d see our first real cheats within the first two weeks of the beta; it turns out I was optimistic and instead we only had a few days of quiet before we had to be working at full steam ahead."

The American firm's anti-cheat software cannot be turned off, and is automatically downloaded with the game. However, users took issue with this, forcing Riot to address their concerns.

The League of Legends creator is offering up to $100k for reports on cheat exploits in Valorant. Earlier this month, Riot teamed up with ESPN for esports for the tactical shooter. The American firm would like Valorant to "grow naturally" as an esport.

Having entered closed beta at the start of April, the game will be fully launched in the Summer.


Staff Writer

Kayleigh is the Staff Writer for PocketGamer.biz. Besides PGbiz and PCGI she has written as a list writer for Game Rant, rambling about any and all things games related. You can also find her on Twitter talking utter nonsense.