{"id":170525,"date":"2025-12-19T20:27:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T20:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/riot-games-is-making-an-anti-cheat-change-that-could-be-rough-on-older-pcs\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T20:27:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T20:27:36","slug":"riot-games-is-making-an-anti-cheat-change-that-could-be-rough-on-older-pcs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/riot-games-is-making-an-anti-cheat-change-that-could-be-rough-on-older-pcs\/","title":{"rendered":"Riot Games is making an anti-cheat change that could be rough on older PCs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>At this point, most competitive online multiplayer games on the PC come with some kind of <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2020\/04\/ring-0-of-fire-does-riot-games-new-anti-cheat-measure-go-too-far\/\">kernel-level anti-cheat software<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2022\/09\/eas-new-anti-cheat-tools-dip-into-the-dreaded-kernel-mode\/\">As we\u2019ve written before<\/a>, this is software that runs with more elevated privileges than most other apps and games you run on your PC, allowing it to load in earlier and detect advanced methods of cheating. More recently, anti-cheat software has started to require more Windows security features like <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2025\/08\/battlefield-6-dev-apologizes-for-requiring-secure-boot-to-power-anti-cheat-tools\/\">Secure Boot<\/a>, a TPM 2.0 module, and <a href=\"https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/windows\/security\/hardware-security\/enable-virtualization-based-protection-of-code-integrity?tabs=security\">virtualization-based memory integrity protection<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Riot Games, best known for titles like\u00a0<em>Valorant<\/em> and\u00a0<em>League of Legends <\/em>and the Vanguard anti-cheat software, has often been one of the earliest to implement new anti-cheat requirements. There\u2019s already <a href=\"https:\/\/support-valorant.riotgames.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/22291331362067-Vanguard-Restrictions\">a long list of checks<\/a> that systems need to clear before they\u2019ll be allowed to play Riot\u2019s games online, and now the studio is announcing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.riotgames.com\/en\/news\/vanguard-security-update-motherboard\">a new one<\/a>: a BIOS update requirement that will be imposed on \u201ccertain players\u201d following <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kb.cert.org\/vuls\/id\/382314\">Riot\u2019s discovery of a UEFI bug<\/a> that could allow especially dedicated and motivated cheaters to circumvent certain memory protections.<\/p>\n<p>In short, the bug affects the input-output memory management unit (IOMMU) \u201con some UEFI-based motherboards from multiple vendors.\u201d One feature of the IOMMU is to protect system memory from direct access during boot by external hardware devices, which otherwise might manipulate the contents of your PC\u2019s memory in ways that could enable cheating.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/12\/some-valorant-players-need-to-update-their-pc-bios-to-keep-anti-cheat-software-happy\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gadgets\/2025\/12\/some-valorant-players-need-to-update-their-pc-bios-to-keep-anti-cheat-software-happy\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wpematico_credit\"><small>Powered by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wpematico.com\" target=\"_blank\">WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At this point, most competitive online multiplayer games on the PC come with some kind of kernel-level anti-cheat software. As we\u2019ve written before, this is software that runs with more elevated privileges than most other apps and games you run on your PC, allowing it to load in earlier and detect advanced methods of cheating. More recently, anti-cheat software has started to require more Windows security features like Secure Boot,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Riot Games is making an anti-cheat change that could be rough on older PCs - UshopWell.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/riot-games-is-making-an-anti-cheat-change-that-could-be-rough-on-older-pcs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Riot Games is making an anti-cheat change that could be rough on older PCs - UshopWell.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At this point, most competitive online multiplayer games on the PC come with some kind of kernel-level anti-cheat software. As we\u2019ve written before, this is software that runs with more elevated privileges than most other apps and games you run on your PC, allowing it to load in earlier and detect advanced methods of cheating. 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