Hey everyone! League team and the Anti-Cheat team here with an update on Vanguard. We’ve been following a lot of the Vanguard conversations that have been raised either here or on other social platforms and we wanted to give some clarification on a few of the popular points you might have seen.
Overall, the rollout has gone well and we’re already seeing Vanguard functioning as intended. We’ve already seen a hard drop off of bot accounts in the usual places, and we will continue to monitor this.
Since 14.9 went live, fewer than 0.03% of players have reported issues with Vanguard. In most cases, these are common error codes such as VAN codes 128, 152, 1067, -81, 9001, or 68 that are easily solved through player support or troubleshooting, and account for the vast majority of issues we are seeing. There are also a few trickier situations that have popped up that we’re actively looking into; driver incompatibilities for example. If you're running into issues like this please contact Player Support.
We also plan on sharing a full external report with you in the coming weeks/months after Vanguard has been live for a bit.
Below are a few areas that we want to make sure we provide some additional clarity around immediately.
Bricking Hardware
At this point in time, we have not confirmed any instances of Vanguard bricking anyone’s hardware, but we want to encourage anyone who's having issues to contact Player Support so we can look into it and help out. We’ve individually resolved a few of the major threads you may have seen so far of users claiming this with their machines and have confirmed that Vanguard wasn’t the cause of the issues they were facing.
About ~0.7% of the playerbase bypassed Microsoft’s enforcement for TPM 2.0 when they installed Windows 11, but the rollout of Vanguard requires that those players now enable it to play the game. This requires a change to a BIOS setting, which differs based on the manufacturer. Vanguard does not and cannot make changes to the BIOS itself.
BIOS settings can be confusing, and we’ve seen two niche cases where it’s created an issue.
The first is that many manufacturers prompt a switch to UEFI mode when TPM 2.0 is enabled, but if the existing Windows 11 installation is on an MBR partition, it would become unbootable afterwards. Some OEMs support LegacyBoot mode with TPM 2.0, but to support UEFI mode, Windows 11 must be installed on a GPT partition. Microsoft has a guide and a helpful tool that can help avoid a reformat and reinstall if you’re in this scenario.
The second was a player we spoke to that accidentally also enabled SecureBoot with a highly custom configuration. While Vanguard makes use of the SecureBoot setting on VALORANT, we elected not to use it for League, due to the older hardware that comprises its userbase. Older rigs can have compatibility issues with this setting, and that’s actually one of the primary reasons the Vanguard launch was delayed.
For example, some GPUs are known to have Option ROM that is not UEFI SecureBoot capable (especially older cards), and sometimes this can result from players having flashed it themselves to “unlock” the card. If the Option ROM isn’t signed, enabling SecureBoot would prevent your GPU from rendering anything (since it won’t boot), resulting in a black screen. There would be two ways to fix this: Connect the monitor to an integrated graphics card (if you have one) and then disable SecureBoot in BIOS. Remove your CMOS battery to reset back to default settings.
TL;DR - We DO NOT require SecureBoot for League of Legends. Don’t enable it unless you are sure you want to.
Vanguard Screenshots
To be very clear, Vanguard DOES NOT take a screenshot of your whole computer/multiple monitors. However, it will take a picture of your game client (in fullscreen) and the region your game client occupies (in windowed/borderless) for suspicious activity related to ESP hacks.
This is a very normal practice when it comes to anti-cheat and almost all anti-cheat do this. It is also a known element within the community of folks familiar with anti-cheat software. When it comes to privacy concerns, Vanguard features are compliant with regional privacy laws, and the team works directly with Information Security teams and Compliance teams to ensure that Vanguard is safe.
As a reminder, please check out our latest blog for all the facts around Vanguard in League and we'll talk to you again soon with the full report in the coming weeks.
Since the downvote bots have hit the post I'll compile some of the Riot replies to common questions here for the sake of visibility:
"Any word on fixing the conflict with MSI Afterburner?"
"Yeah, started the process of reaching out to MSi so we can work together to get it fixed. We did see similar issues on VAL launch that were self-serviced, but we'd like to get it fixed as quickly as possible."
Regarding screenshot functionality of Vanguard:
However, we're not certain this will ever be necessary, as the FoW in LoL is very unforgiving, and your client rarely has information on units you shouldn't see. The impact of a purely vision-based cheat is too minimal, but we'll have to see how cheaters adapt."
"Is the roll out of this compliant in the EU? What differs in the US?"
"Yep, fully. We're compliant with the regional privacy laws of the countries we service."
"What differs about vanguard in the EU vs US?"
"There aren't any differences, we still reach compliance with privacy laws even in areas they aren't mandated, so the US still has the stringency of the European and other regional privacy laws."
"Can Riot Vanguard ban me if League/Riot Client is not running and I am modding another game?"
"We only look to ban for tools that are actively tampering in League of Legends in a malicious and unauthorized manner. I can't ensure that some of these tools won't have random hooks into the game, but if they're closed, you should be ok."
"a friend wanted to ask if certain VMs were going to whitelisted like Nvidia Now, since I know a lot are being used to run bots"
But we're still thinking on it, and we have a few ideas.
"Say, I don't have TPM physically in my PC. But in the light of the soon discontinuity of Windows 10 support, I upgraded it to Windows 11 bypassing the TPM requirement. So, to be able playing LoL, I now have to downgrade to Windows 10 and use unsupported system or literally just buy a new PC?"
"It is required to have TPM 2.0 enabled on Windows 11."
"My biggest concerns are privacy and security, and I want to personally let Riot know that as a player since 2011 Riot's decision to force players to install an always-on, kernel-level monitoring system to play their game has caused me to quit."
Having a kernel mode solution wasn’t a lightly taken decision. With the implementation of our user mode Packman solution in 2018, we had already seen a large chunk of the industry move over to kernel mode drivers. While it did have initial effectiveness, along with server-sided detections, we needed more device trust in order to ensure security. It enables us to keep a more secure environment, without needing to exfiltrate excessive data to try to make detections in post."
"Why not draw the barrier around ranked?
A sizeable population never touches ranked or even exclusively plays ARAM and mostly doesn't care about the few scripters in those modes.
I also think that the excuses around TFT are extremely weak as it is almost trivial to bot for TFT rewards even through vanguard. Furthermore there are little to no avenues of scripting for TFT and no scripts have been known so far."
Also, ARAM does have a fairly sizeable scripting population — about 3.5% of games last year."
i know this is never going to happen. but i would love it if i could set vanguard to not automatically launch and have league tell me to restart my computer to enable vanguard. i dont play league every day so i dont need vanguard booting on startup every time i turn on my computer.
yea like, i think the biggest thing besides being kernel-level is the "Always on" part. Like why does it need to be on, even when I'm not playing a Riot game?
How else will they know what you're doing?
That does sound excessive.
you already know why
Vanguard is too invasive, I could only play league once a month but vanguard runs that entire time anyways
Good suggestion ill pass it on to the team.
Wasn't this same feedback given for Valorant years ago?
Yes but that doesn't mean it will pass it will just means they are putting the idea out. 90% of ideas don't get passed anyway
they don't give a fuck it's just a PR response lmao
Pretending like you've never heard it before
Being able to play TFT / aram without vanguard would be cool. My whole friend group quit league with vanguard coming. One got bios error and lost all his stuff. The other two. One doesn’t trust vanguard and the other it kills their frames. They only played aram and tft. I never cared much about someone scripting in aram it’s a coin flip for fun mode. I’m sure player base dropped and this could be a solution.
Lmao dude. Sure you will
They did, and the team said no
I want to thank everyone involved for getting vanguard into league, it finally made me quit.
I haven't played since I heard this change was coming, and it's been fantastic. I refuse to install this garbage malware. Preventing other things from running on my PC instead of just warning me? Running at boot, always being on, conflicting with other applications? Enforcing certain BIOS and Windows settings? For one fucking game? Fuck off.
Exactly mate. They can go fuck themselves.
Riot literally took the worst decision for the game since inception.
Was going to log on and then I saw that malware update was finally being rolled out, so I came here.
Now I'm reading it has problems with MSI afterburner/RTSS. After 10 years Riot helped me quit lul
I got kicked out of a game because the client said vanguard was off, when I was actively playing for an hour. I had to reboot my pc. The time it took, we lost the game.
Same happened to me. Got the Leaver penalty in ranked too, brutal.
Kicked from a lobby. Got the dodge timer. If Vanguard kicks you they should not punish.
Same issue I had on PBE. One time Vanguard completely died mid-match and disappeared from my taskbar, needing a restart.
Another time League kicked me out mid-match anf kept saying I needed to enable Vanguard to play, but it was right there in the taskbar supposedly running.
Yeah, sorry but this is a shit show. I was waiting to see what is gonna be the first reactions with Vanguard but seeing the comments just made me sure not to install the update.
If they make Vanguard turn on only when League is running i might be ok with it. Until then i'm not touching the game again.
same here I uninstalled about 2 weeks ago when I heard of Vanguard and checked now to see how it iwas going. It's sad I really enjoyed the game but fuck this
Even if it was only on while your games running, it still has a crazy level of access.
In riots eyes and their countless bot accounts on forums you will just be labelled a butthurt cheater
TLDR: go fuck y’ourself
Just to raise awareness, if I close vanguard before closing the riot client it causes a bluescreen 100% of the time. Both launch on startup, and its really not the end of the world, but it is an annoyance.
Closing the LoL client itself when it freezes also did this to me, which is worse because it doubles (or more if no SSD) the time it takes you to get back into the match.
Noway i install a malware to play the game. Goodbye
I tried solving Van68, nothing worked so far. Any suggestions?
Vanguard disables my laptop touchscreen driver 😢 I just sent in a ticket, but from Googling it looks like another person with this problem just got ignored...
edit: I use the touchscreen for work, not for League, but it's troublesome to have to disable Vanguard/restart when I want to use the touchscreen and then do the opposite when I want to play League =o=
Looks like you're getting ignored too
everyone in this thread is getting ignored or bland useless PR responses. this is a farce.
Touchscreen? Fucking cheater.
You have drivers? Fucking cheater.
You have a computer? Fucking cheater.
Can we just have a tft-exclusive launcher for Pc without Vanguard? I dont play LoL anymore and dont want Vanguard on my pc.
I used to love that tft was in the league client, now not so much.
Not an optimal solution, but the way I got "around" this is by using the Bluestacks Emulator to emulate an android phone on my PC and then play TFT as a "mobile" game. That way you don't need the riot client or vanguard
I'M FREE AT LAST
After installing Vanguard, my PC started taking forever to boot.
Only after disabling Vanguard on startup, was it fixed.
I'm wondering if you know of this issue?
The link is wrong, the actual tool and guide for it is here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt
Hey, I haven't updated because of Vanguard. Because it is sus to me.
Why does Riot/Tencent want us to have Vanguard on even when we don't play and even when we are done playing ?
Why there is not an option to disable vanguard on launch with a prompte to reboot PC when we want to play league ?
Why can't we easily completely close and unload Vanguard when it's on and we are done playing ?
funny, that not the toxic shit community made me uninstall LoL but actually RIOT itself with that vanguard shit
guess maybe I will really try dota. I will miss some of the fav characters from LoL and to this day I'm sad that Diana didn't got fanservice skins (specially Pool Party of Star Guardian) but I'm not gonna let RIOT/Tencent install some bullshit on my PC. I wish they let play at least ARAM (and TFT) without having to install Vanguard
it's so weird that they care more about spripters and botters than actually toxic shit people that ruin more games even outside of high elo ranked games (where most people probably use scripts/bots)
TL;DR: Just uninstall and play some other MOBA!
I’m curious to know if you have seen an increase of people uninstalling League after the Vanguard rollout?
They absolutely have but will not talk about the specific numbers, I think lol
Maybe only by saying: “Yes, now a lot of CHEATERS and SCRIPTERS left the League, so Vanguard is good”…
They probably looked at my k/d/a/ and put me down as a levelling bot tbh
Yeah, don't want to upset daddy tencent
I love the statistics of "only 0.9% of players experience some issue" because they conveniently avoid the part that is no longer an active player due to this. To be perfectly fair to them, not much they can do about those players so realistically there's no reason to keep stats about them but I'm a spiteful bastard. I already uninstalled the game years ago and mostly lurking because I like to read some of the balance discussions but even if I wanted to reinstall it the TPM requirement is enough to stop me.
Edit: out of curiosity I dug a big and turns out I have a TPM module in my pc I'm just a dumbass and didn't realize it so just assumed I don't have it and installed win 11 with Rufus to bypass the requirement. You live and learn.
I mean I am a cloud computer user for money reasons and I cannot play League anymore based on this. It obviously won't be mentionned in stats.
1% of over 50 million people is still a shitton of people.
And most people dont even report issues, many just delete the game instead or fix it themselves if they can or just hope it goes away and stop for now.
The software is horrible and i for one will leave the game uninstalled as long as Vanguard exists in its current invasive and draconian form.
My entire friend group is no longer playing League due to Vanguard. Didn't even update the client. I've played League for over a decade, but this was the final straw.
Same here, played since 2011, through all kinds of metas I disliked, but Vanguard is too invasive for my comfort. Plenty of other games to spend time on instead.
I am one of them. Two friends also quit for good
UNINSTALL GANG RISE UP
Our ranks are thriving. ☝️
i uninstalled, i dont want vanguard mess with my pc without restrictions and collect my info 24/7, i dont allow windows do it , i will not allow LoL do it
I unistalled back on 14.5 because of the upcoming Vanguard addition. I figured I'd just rip the band-aid off and be done with it. Now I just lurk here and see what people thought thus far, I feel no regrets.
why all this shit for a game?
Any word on fixing the conflict with MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner?
Why do I need Vanguard for TFT?
making sure you arent paying mortdog in any way for specific reasons c: (but generally speaking, vanguard is bound to the league client and so is tft)
So they can screenshot your other monitors and pc because china I'm sorry Tencent, needs your information
Does disabling vanguard from startup in task manager works or it only hides the vanguard system tray (vanguard driver is still running)? I don't play league of legends as much (2 days a week at most), so I am a bit reluctant to having it turn on all the time.
just disables the tray icon, driver still runs (vgk.sys). I ended up using a bat file to disable it when i don't want it running.