Valorant's Vanguard anti-cheat sports “Fog of War” system to combat wallhacks

Amidst the hype of Riot Games’ newest title Valorant receiving an open beta on April 7th, many Twitch streamers and players alike have been talking about every feature of the new game - including the brand new Vanguard anti-cheat system.

Twitch streamer ONSCREEN revealed some information few knew before when he laid out how the "Fog of War" function works stating: “[The system] doesn’t even render player locations until just before line of sight happens.”

This approach means players locations aren't recorded on every other players client until they can physically see them, with ONSCREEN putting it like this:

“So what that means is if cheaters somehow get around Vanguard and manage to make a wallhack, they couldn’t. It’s physically not possible.”

In response to ONSCREEN's clip, Riot developer (u/RiotArkem) took to the corresponding Reddit thread and answered some eager fans’ questions about this “Fog of War” system.

• Read more: Valorant: Agent and Abilities Guide

Replying to Reddit user asking how this system takes auditory clues into account, he had the following to say:

“There's an audio component to the Fog of War system where if you can hear an enemy that can trigger the location being sent to you. Footsteps are a special case though and are handled through a different system to try and make them as accurate and secure as possible.”

While this does leave some questions, it means that players have nothing to fear in regards to this system negatively impacting their performance. The system also means that at any given point in time, there are going to be much fewer entities rendered in the game-world, thus improving performance drastically.

Back when Riot changed their anti-cheat system to this new variant, they put out a  humorous developer blog post. In great detail, it explains how this system will be hard to beat and much of that has to do with its "kernel-mode" privileges.

• Read more: This could be how a game of Valorant ends if a hacker is detected

"Kernel-mode" means that it operates at the most privileged level within your computer, higher than your device drivers or applications, a process used by other anti-cheat systems like EasyAntiCheat and BattlEye

And while many cheat developers have found ways to integrate their hacking clients to this “kernel” level, having an anti-cheat operate at this level is the best any program could hope for. 

Valorant is expected to be the first Riot game to get the anti-cheat system with it expected to be rolled out to League of Legends in the near future.