Valorant’s official closed beta is ongoing, approaching a full week of availability. That makes it all the more impressive, and disappointing, thatValorantalready has cheaters. Riot Games has already talked about its “fog of war” system inValorant, meant to withhold data that cheaters could potentially use maliciously. Cheaters, unfortunately, always find a way, however. The good news is that Riot is aware and aggressively banning cheaters, even catching one while they were live streaming.
The cheater, whose Twitch account has since been banned, is named Pablo in-game. The clip in question ironically begins with the cheater’s teammates accusing them of hacking. The hacker responds that they’re not cheating, but just seconds later the game is ended by Riot’s system. A large “HACKER DETECTED” message is displayed, saying that the match was terminated as a result and that no win or loss would be credited to any players. The hacker, naturally, wasbanned fromValorant.
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It’s unclear whether Riot’s proprietary cheat-catching tech caught the hacker or if a watchful employee just happened upon the stream. Either way, it’s good to see thatRiotis taking cheating seriously and that it’s on-point when it comes to punishing hackers.
The hacking technology being displayed in-game inValorantisn’t anything abnormal. There’s aimbot technology clearly at work, allowing hackers to quickly target enemies and kill them faster than normal reflexes should allow, thoughwall-hacking technologyhasn’t been fully on display. What has been seen is players shooting through terrain that can be fired through, like doors. Perhaps Riot’s “fog of war” anti-cheat tech doesn’t cover terrain that’s wall bangable.
While Riot’s response is laudable, the situation is also understandably frustrating. Riot may have made improvements to modernanti-cheat technologyor it may not have, but the results speak for themselves. Hacking is still going to be an issue inValorantand it appears there’s very little Riot can do to stop it except for banning accounts they catch.
ToValorant’s credit, this is the closed beta for theonline multiplayer shooter. It’s still in development, which means Riot could have further plans for its anti-hacking technology.Valorantwill hopefully become a better game due to catching these cheats early. As pretty much every online multiplayer game in history shows, however, there’s only so much that can be done.
Valorantlaunches this summer on PC.
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