by In response to multiple complaints of hardware failure following the rollout of its Vanguard anti-cheat software to League of Legends, Riot Games says it has not confirmed “any instances of Vanguard pushing anyone’s hardware” but admitted that some BIOS settings may be causing headaches for a small number of players.
The controversial Vanguard anti-cheat software has been live in Riot’s shooter Valorant since the game’s launch in 2020, but it didn’t come to League of Legends until earlier this week, as part of patch 14.9. Reports of serious trouble quickly followed: Players said their PCs were crashing, stuck in reboot loops, and in some cases “bricked” — rendered completely inoperable — after the update.
In response to the complaints, Riot said on Reddit that “overall, the rollout has gone well,” and that “less than 0.03% of players have reported issues with Vanguard.” He added that after solving “some of the main threads” of PCs being hacked, he confirmed that Vanguard was not really the cause.
“Approximately ~0.7% of players bypassed Microsoft’s implementation of TPM 2.0 when they installed Windows 11, but Vanguard’s rollout requires those players to enable the game now,” Riot said. “This requires changing a BIOS setting, which is different based on the manufacturer. Vanguard does not and cannot make changes to the BIOS itself.”
TPM (Trusted Platform Module) 2.0 is a security feature made mandatory for Windows 11 – sort of. There was initial confusion about whether “older” PCs would support it and whether TPM 2.0 was even needed before the rollout of Windows 11, and then Microsoft muddied the waters further by telling people how to bypass it completely when upgrading from Windows 10 to Win11. As we noted at the time, the whole thing was confusing and frustrating, but it opened a path to the Windows 11 upgrade for people who didn’t have, or couldn’t afford, TPM 2.0 support on their PCs.
Unfortunately, that avenue now leads here. Microsoft allowed people to bypass TPM 2.0, but Riot won’t: The League of Legends support page says “if TPM 2.0 is disabled in Windows 11, League of Legends will not launch properly, and players will be greeted with a VAN9001 error.”
Complaints about hardware being bricked are rare and stem from a few very specific situations, according to Riot. Many motherboard manufacturers encourage 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, it won’t boot when that switch is made : To support UEFI mode, Windows 11 must be installed on a GPT (GUID Partition Table) partition. The good news is, Microsoft offers a free tool that will convert MBR disks to GPT in most cases without the need for reformatting.
There is also a problem with Secure Boot, a technology meant to ensure that invalid software and firmware are not loaded. Vanguard uses the Secure Boot feature for Valorant but Riot chose not to enable it for Vanguard in League, because so many players of that game have older PCs (don’t forget, League has been around since 2009) that have issues they have Secure Boot compatibility.
For example, Riot said that if a GPU option ROM isn’t signed, enabling Secure Boot — as at least one player apparently did — will prevent it from doing anything. If that happens, the only solutions are to connect your monitor to your integrated graphics card (if you have one) and then disable Secure Boot in the BIOS, or pull your CMOS battery to reset everything back to the default settings.
As an old timer this all makes “yes, PC gaming” sense, but for anyone unfamiliar with the luxury of wrangling jumpers to avoid IRQ conflicts (ie most people), it’s It’s a real roadblock (and annoyance) to run into one of these issues. Finding solutions is a challenge in itself, especially if your computer isn’t working, and even when possible solutions are found, fiddling with BIOS settings and charging CMOS batteries isn’t something everyone is comfortable with. As one redditor put it in response to Riot’s directive, “Holy hell, how is a regular player supposed to understand this?”
Riot actually addressed this possibility a few weeks ago in a blog post before Vanguard came to League, saying that Microsoft’s enforcement of the TPM 2.0 requirement in Windows 11 is “relatively weak and easily overlooked.” Riot chose to be more serious about it: “Thus, some Windows 11 users may experience an impact on their ability to play League,” Riot wrote, “especially if you changed registry keys to meet this requirement bypass.”
And it seems he has no intention of walking back. In response to a player who said their only option to continue playing League is to downgrade to Windows 10 or buy a whole new PC, Riot simply said, “TPM 2.0 must be enabled on Windows 11.”
As for why Riot chose to add new and highly objectionable anti-canceling technology to a 15-year-old game, the studio said in a pre-release blog post that while League is a relatively solid video game, “it’s scripting. an ongoing problem: On worldwide, 1 in 15 games were found to have a botter or scripter in recent months, and Riot said that percentage is much higher in some regions.
“Increased client security and less scripting means the League team will be able to leverage more mechanically valuable designs, like combos, timing windows, and executions,” Riot said. “Scripters will have less poisonous ranked stats, allowing for easier balancing of high-risk and high-reward champions, and games ruined by cheaters can be ‘redone’, returning LP to those who have been hit.
“I know it’s hard to be happy with a new anti-cheat, but this is the hardest part. It’s only up and to the right from here.” Well, for most players, anyway.
In the same thread, Riot said Vanguard doesn’t “take a screenshot of your entire computer/multiple monitors,” although it will take a shot of game clients “for suspicious activity related to ESP hacks,” which it said is almost all anti-cheats. software does and that is in full compliance with regional privacy laws.
I’ve reached out to Riot to find out more about how it aims to address these issues going forward and will update if I hear back.
