In response to numerous complaints about hardware failure following the rollout of Vanguard anti-cheat software to League of Legends, Riot Games said it “has not confirmed any instances of Vanguard obscuring anyone’s hardware” but acknowledged that some BIOS settings can cause headaches for players. few players.
The controversial Vanguard anti-cheat software has been live in Riot’s shooter Valorant since the game launched in 2020, but it didn’t come to League of Legends until earlier this week as part of the 14.9 patch. Reports of serious problems followed: Gamers said their PCs crashed, got stuck in reboot loops, and in some cases became “bricked” (completely inoperable) after the update.
In response to the complaints, Riot said on Reddit that “the rollout went well overall” and that “less than 0.03% of players reported issues with Vanguard.” He also said that after resolving “a few key issues” regarding PC bricking, it was confirmed that Vanguard was not, in fact, the cause.
“Approximately 0.7% of the player base bypassed Microsoft’s TPM 2.0 implementation when installing Windows 11, but the rollout of Vanguard now requires those players to enable it to play the game,” Riot said. “This requires a change to the BIOS setting, which varies depending on the manufacturer. Vanguard does not and cannot make changes to the BIOS itself.”
TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0 is a security feature that has been made mandatory for Windows 11. There was initially confusion about whether “older” PCs would support it and whether TPM 2.0 was actually necessary before the release of Windows 11, and then Microsoft cut the water by telling people how to bypass it entirely when upgrading from Windows 10 to Windows 10. also blurred it. Win11. As we noted at the time, it was all confusing and frustrating, but it did pave the way for a Windows 11 upgrade for people who didn’t have TPM 2.0 support or enabled on their computers.
Unfortunately, that road now leads here. Microsoft has allowed people to bypass TPM 2.0, but Riot won’t: “If TPM 2.0 is disabled in Windows 11, League of Legends will not launch properly and players will encounter error VAN9001,” the League of Legends support page states.
According to Riot, complaints about hardware bricking are a rare occurrence resulting from a few very specific scenarios. Many motherboard manufacturers prompt users to switch to UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) mode when TPM 2.0 is enabled, but if your Windows 11 installation is on an MBR (Master Boot Record) partition, doing so will not boot: To support UEFI mode, Windows 11 requires a GPT (GUID Partitioning) partition. It should be uploaded to the table section. The good news is that Microsoft offers a free tool that will convert MBR disks to GPT in most cases without requiring reformatting.
There is also an issue with Secure Boot, a technology intended to ensure that unverified software and firmware are not installed. Vanguard uses Secure Boot for Valorant, but Riot chose not to enable it for Vanguard in League because many players of that game have older PCs with Secure Boot compatibility issues (remember, League has been around since 2009).
As an example, Riot said that if the GPU’s optional ROM is unsigned, enabling Secure Boot (as at least one player apparently did) will prevent it from rendering anything. In such a case, the only solution is to connect your monitor to your integrated graphics card (if you have one) and then disable Secure Boot in the BIOS or remove your CMOS battery to reset everything to default settings.
As a veteran, this all has a “yes, PC game” vibe to it, but for anyone unfamiliar with the joys of wrangling with jumpers to avoid IRQ conflicts (i.e. most people), this is a very real roadblock (and annoyance) to encountering one of these problems. Finding a solution is a challenge in itself, especially if your computer isn’t working, and even if potential fixes are found, fiddling with BIOS settings and messing with CMOS batteries isn’t something everyone is comfortable with. As one redditor said in response to Riot’s prompt, “Wow, how could a casual player understand this?”
Riot touched on this possibility in a blog post a few weeks ago, ahead of Vanguard’s arrival in League, saying Microsoft’s implementation of the TPM 2.0 requirement in Windows 11 was “relatively weak and easily circumvented.” Riot opted to be more serious about it: “So a select few Windows 11 users may see their ability to play League impacted,” Riot wrote, “especially if you modified the registry keys to bypass this requirement.”
And it looks like he has no intention of returning. In response to a player who said their only options to continue playing League were to upgrade to Windows 10 or buy a completely new PC, Riot said, “TPM 2.0 needs to be enabled on Windows 11.”
As for why Riot chose to add a new and unpopular anti-cheat technology to a 15-year-old game, the studio said in its pre-release blog post that while LoL is a “pretty safe video game,” the script is a game. Persistent problem: 1 in 15 games globally have been found to have a bot or scripter in recent months, and Riot said the rate is much higher in some regions.
“Increased client security and less scripting means the League team can take advantage of more mechanically rewarding designs like combos, timing windows, and executes,” Riot said. “Ranked stats will not be poisoned by scripters, making it easier to balance high risk and reward champions, and games ruined by cheaters can eventually be ‘undone’ and LP refunded to those affected.
“I know it’s hard to be happy about the new anti-cheat, but that’s the hardest part. It’s just up and right from here.” It’s like that for most players anyway.
In the same thread, Riot said that Vanguard “does not take a screenshot of your entire computer/multiple monitors” but will take a photo of game clients “for suspicious activity related to ESP hacks”; This is something almost all anti-cheat software says. the software does this, and it is fully compliant with regional privacy laws.
I’ve reached out to Riot for more information on how it aims to resolve these issues in the future and will update if I hear back.