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What is Vanguard Anticheat?

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Vanguard is the proprietary, closed-source, ring0, kernel-level anticheat implemented in League of Legends and VALORANT which is currently incompatible with Wine and virtualisation methods, therefore also incompatible with the most popular and most accessible methods of gaming on Linux systems.

Why should I be Concerned About Kernel-Level Anticheats?

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See more: https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Riot_Vanguard

Vanguard Technical Information

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Timeline of Vanguard and League of Legends

Below is a list of every occurrence of Riot or a Rioter's statements and actions regarding Linux/Wine players with links to original sources.

For several years after the infamous /dev/null initial public announcement of Vanguard as a technology, the implementation with regards to League of Legends was left ambiguous and up to an extraordinary amount of public speculation in a frustrating, yet very typical display of communication from Riot Games. This page, which was one of the primary motivations behind the creation of what would become this entire website in the first place, was originally intended to document every possible "official" statement regarding League of Legends on Linux in an effort to dispel rumours arguing that, at the time, Riot had concretely stated future implementation in League of Legends.

As hindsight would have us all know, dear reader, the maintainer of this wiki did not make what most of us would describe as "an accurate prediction".

Nevertheless, this page still serves as a thoroughly-researched, well-formatted archive of the history, and ultimately neglect, of our little open source gaming niche; as well as further technical reading and information on Vanguard itself, the risks it poses, and other general kernel-level anticheat information.

Believe it or not, there was once a time in which developers at Riot were at worst only apathetic towards Linux players, and there were even a small handful of amazing Rioters who stopped by throughout the years, either just to say "hi (although not official hi, I still see you Linux players)", or even on a few occaisons to assist with unbanning many players who had got caught up in accidental ban waves.

To all the Rioters who did care about Linux players throughout the years: thank you. Your employer may have chosen a different path, but your personal enthusiasm was not taken for granted.

June 2018: Official League forums post confirming GPU-passthrough and Wine compatibility

In a League forums post (now deprecated RIP, still accessible with Wayback Machine), Riot Perma confirmed that Riot recognize, monitor and actively allow players who use Wine and GPU-passthrough virtualisation. r/leagueoflinx mod u/EnglishDentist also crossposted this forum post to the main r/leagueoflegends subreddit here. Riot Perma's full comment is also archieved in that thread:

For players using Wine, the community is already at work fixing incompatibilities with our changes. These changes were live on our Public Beta Environment for several months to give developers of third-party applications time to adapt. As a normal part of software development, especially with such comprehensive changes, there can be issues introduced with third party applications. We have not consciously prevented the use of Wine for playing the game, and we ask for your patience as the Wine community remedies any incompatibilities.

Early 2020: Official Riot /dev/null article on anticheat

This was the initial article on Vanguard from Riot. There is only one reference to the fact that it has the potential to come to League and it does not give a confirmation or a timeline, only a reference to Vanguard's potential to be implemented in League after VALORANT (Project A, at the time):

Disclaimer: This post is kinda tech-heavy and concerns anti-cheat tooling that won’t be exclusive to League of Legends. Other games (like Project A) will be protected by the referenced upgrade before LoL is.

Feb 04 2020: Rioter gave us a glimpse of internal Linux player data

The Rioter who wrote the above /dev/null article, /u/mirageofpenguins, shared supposed internal information from Linux players, "~6000 games a day played by ~700 Wine users" (note: this was posted in Feb of 2020 so numbers have most likely shifted since then), as well as their personal opinion on kernel-level anticheat. Full thread includes more info, however a notable highlight is:

"So, the driver component wouldn't be on LoL for at least a year (if we even decided to utilize it)"

Apr 17 2020: Riot publishes a response to the Vanguard privacy backlash

The article did not give us any new information regarding Vanguard's potential future in League, nor regarding Linux/MacOS players. However, it's entry is included for documentation's sake.

Sep 27 2020: Lead Designer of TFT confirms Riot have no plans to bring Vanguard to TFT

While not entirely apples-to-apples, TFT and League of Legends are the only two games to share the main League client and are more closely connected than any of Riot's other IPs. See the related subreddit thread and discussion here. In response to the question "Any information on if Riot Vanguard will be implemented for TFT?", he answers:

"I don't believe so, I would be shocked if we did that."

May 01 2021: Riot sends Privacy Policy and TOS update email

The email covered various other topics unrelated to Vanguard such as a new refund policy and analyzing voice chat data (!), however there was a short paragraph where Riot discuss Vanguard. The email only confirmed two points: Riot want to leave the door open in their leagalese for future implementation in other titles and if they decide to implement it in a given title they will annouce so far in advance (as they have done with the majority of tech updates). Full thread here.

... we updated the language about anti-cheat software that we may require you to install to play certain instances of our games. We will always be as transparent as possible about our anti-cheat programs without compromising our solutions. We’ll let you know about any new anti-cheat programs especially with kernel mode drivers well before they’re released and required to be installed.

July 2021: Accidental banwave and subsquent unbanning by a Rioter

An apparent accidental banwave that falsely flagged a large portion of the Wine gamers as cheaters, prompting bans. In the relevant thread Rioter /u/riotk3o kindly jumped in and reverted every ban shortly after the initial reports came in. Every case of a user being falsely flagged was then reverted.

Jan 13 2023: Brief mention of anticheat updates in a Twitter video

Riot Meddler confirmed in a Twitter video that there will indeed be changes coming to a large portion of League's backend tech in 2023, including League's anticheat. However, in typical Riot fashion the wording, details, and projected timeline are rather vague: the anticheat is only give a single sentence worth in the video (5:53).

... and how our anticheat works; updating that...

// TODO 2023->2025

// Document Vanguard implementation timeline from initial announcement to today, incl. faulty rollouts, security incidents, etc. // The timeline itself could probably get a structrural overhaul too on the page, but missing content should be first focus.