League of Legends devs respond to claims Vanguard is “bricking” computers

A new anti-cheat was added to League of Legends in patch 14.9, called Vanguard, and players are claiming it is causing massive issues to their computers. Riot Games has responded to theclaims, saying the issues are not Vanguard-related.

Vanguard is Riot’s proprietary anti-cheat program that was a big part of their Valorant launch. It is a kernel-level anti-cheat similar to other popular multiplayer titles, however, players have previously accused Vanguard of being spyware due to the level of access to people’s computers it needs to work.

Riot has pushed back on these accusations in the past and, after an initial delay, added the anti-cheat to League of Legends in patch 14.9 on May 1. With its launch, multiple players have come forward on social media and Reddit claiming the anti-cheat is “bricking” their computers, or messing with their internal systems.

One of the most popular League content creators, Nick ‘LS’ De Cesare, claimed that the update “bricked” two of his PCs and warned players to be “afraid of this Vanguard update.”

Update the other pc in my house also bricked now.

Be afraid of this vanguard update, what the fuck is this

— H. Baker (@LSXYZ9) May 1, 2024

He later posted an update, explaining how he fixed one of his computers but the other was still not working.

Riot senior anti-cheat analyst Matt ‘K30’ Paoletti has refuted claims on Reddit that the barrage of technical issues with the patch is due to Vanguard’s introduction.

“An issue like this wouldn’t be related to Vanguard. If you haven’t restarted your computer in a while, it could related to an issue with your CMOS battery, since that’s what powers the start-up chain,” he told one player who claimed their laptop wouldn’t turn on after the update.

One League of Legends streamer also claimed, using screenshots, that the moderators for the game’s subreddit are deleting comments from the thread about Vanguard, and K30 arguing with players.

Riot is denying that Vanguard is bricking people's PCs, and any kind of Vanguard discussion is banned from the sub.

It's tampering with unrelated files, preventing startup programs from booting, causing other programs to crash, etc.

All this was known and they still launched. https://t.co/cTWWmPioIh pic.twitter.com/PO6NW6kpGJ

— Yasukeh (@yasubro) May 1, 2024

K30, representing the developer, put out a lengthy statement on Reddit, saying they have not confirmed that Vanguard is “bricking” PCs.

“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,” K30 said.

The Riot employee also said the company plans to share a full report on Vanguard’s rollout in the coming weeks/months.