Riot’s Vanguard banned 1600 new VALORANT cheaters in the second wave of bans. Phillip Koskinas, one of the developers behind Vanguard characterized them as “Soulbans”.
Riot made it really clear last year when they announced Project A, now known as VALORANT, on how they are going to deal with cheaters. A robust anti-cheat called Vanguard is at the center of all these bans. After being asked if these bans are just normal hardware bans or something more sophisticated. Phillip described them only as “Soulbans“. Riot previously banned 8873 cheaters in the last wave with the help of Vanguard.
According to him, if you’ve cheated before, all your past, present, and future accounts will also be suspended. However some individuals will be released when the game is, allowing them to try once more on a new account, but this will be the absolute limit of their mercy.
Start again with a clean slate
Riot will give some players who have cheated in the past a second chance when the game will be officially out of its closed beta. Until then all the cheaters will remain banned. Apparently, Riot’s anti-cheat devs are also very active in all the discord servers and other platforms that cheaters use to sell their cheats.
Especial mention goes to Phillip Koskinas who is really active in the cheat maker community. He literally goes undercover to instill fear in the hearts of all the cheat makers. Despite all of Riots’ best efforts cheating in VALORANT will always be a hurdle that they have to deal with.
Cheat makers will always find their way around any anti-cheat protection system. Even if it is something as robust as Vanguard. However, Vanguard is really intrusive in its approach to deal with cheaters. Riot will always have to fine-tune the correct balance between user friendliness and how to deal with cheaters. Although vanguard seems really competent thus far in its job.
Besides, the game is still in closed beta. The real challenge will come when they open the gate for all users. How robust vanguard actually is will be tested at that time. For now, we can all play VALROANT with a peace of mind that there are 1600 fewer cheaters.
