Explore the latest developments concerning Valorant anti-cheat update.
Valorant anti-cheat update soft-bricks $6,000 cheating hardware, company then trolls cheaters on social media — studio tweets 'congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight'
Tom's Hardware Premium equips you with world-class
coverage and detailed insights into the evolving hardware landscape.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Riot Games just delivered one of the most expensive bans in gaming history.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Valorant cheaters have watched their $6,000 investment turned into paperweights overnight as Riot Games updated the Vanguard anti-cheat software to block DMA (Direct Memory Access) cheating devices. Not content with just banning the offenders, there are reports of Vanguard "bricking" the hardware used by cheaters, necessitating a full operating system reinstall. The claims are somewhat misleading since the anti-cheat system only renders certain hardware temporarily unusable. Users have reported that reinstalling the operating system brings everything back to normal; don't install Valorant or Vanguard on it again, or you'll face the same result.
Moringa – Immune System, Energy & Metabolism Natural Anti-inflammatory Helps Detox, Fat Burn – 120 Capsules
Your SSD could be damaged by playing Valorant, but only if you are cheating
Reports of NVMe SSDs becoming unusable after a recent Valorant update have been circulating over the last couple of days. These reports went viral after Riot Games quoted a tweet suggesting those devices are now effectively paperweights, implying hardware-level damage.
Only users running cheats are seemingly affected, while the SSDs of regular players are working just fine. In this article, I'll explain what the issue is, who it affects, and more.
Read more: Windows Server 2025 adds native NVMe path, boosting SSD IOPS performance by 80%
Companies like Riot Games, Epic Games, and BattlEye have created powerful anti-cheat systems that run at the kernel level, making traditional software-based cheating next to impossible. This is where specialized hardware, such as PCIe Direct Memory Access (DMA) devices with custom firmware, comes into play.
For more detailed information, explore updates concerning Valorant anti-cheat update.






















0 Comments