In May, reports began to surface in the Valorant and League of Legends communities about an issue with the Vanguard anti-cheat, developed by Riot Games. Some users claimed that the anti-cheat could brick PCs running prohibited software.
Analyst ogisada, who studies cheats and anti-cheat solutions, wrote that the update disables cheating devices — requiring an operating system reinstallation:
The Vanguard anti-cheat update has blocked most DMA [Direct Memory Access] firmware using SATA/NVMe. Vanguard suddenly started causing an IOMMU [Input/Output Memory Management Unit] restart warning right in the game, after which the DMA firmware becomes completely inoperable — even without the game running or after uninstalling Vanguard. The only solution is a complete OS reinstallation. It uses IOMMU to create read locks, which, when triggered, permanently disable most SATA/NVMe firmware. Even advanced H2 boards were affected.
In response to this post, Riot Games wrote on social media:
Congratulations to the owners of brand new $6000 decorative items!
And supplemented the post with a photo of cheating equipment:
Then a Riot Games representative commented to The Gamer and explained that the Vanguard anti-cheat "does not damage hardware or disable devices":
Our latest anti-cheat update enforces standard platform security features, such as the Input/Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU), on accounts found to be using Direct Memory Access (DMA) cheat devices. These protections are already part of modern systems, and when enabled, they block DMA cheating devices (like those pictured) from accessing memory in applications such as our games.