Valorant

[Indrick Boreale]

Curious as to why you think he is for software that bricks your computer when what he seems to be saying is that the Valorant anti-cheat (while it is shit software) is doing the right thing by asking Windows to check what the fuck is going on with the spoofed device. It's not bricking your hardware, if it was then it'd be permanently unusable regardless of how many times you reinstall :^). I figure it's marking it to tell itself "hey I recognise this hardware and I know it's harmful so I don't want to ever load you" any time it detects it.

You really don't want hardware doing spook shit with memory, that can lead to a boat load of security and instability problems. Also in this instance Windows would be making the final judgement call on whether or not to actually prevent loading this so if you really want something to blame, blame Windows.

I wouldn't touch that sort of hardware with a 10-foot pole, but

The point is not whether it will, but whether it has the potential to, and it very clearly does. Plenty of other methods exist to achieve the result Riot Games wants without resorting to measures that could potentially compromise anyone's hardware

Never touched any Riot Games game either, and I likely never will. The only eSport FPS I own is Counter-Strike 2, and even then, I only play practice for the previous Counter-Strike games nostalgia.

 

[Judex Meus]

A custom PCIe device that uses unsigned firmware to spoof an NVMe drive to inject code into the game. Did you not read the thread, like, at all?

Modern cheating methods are absurdly sophisticated, and there's a big industry making a shit ton of money from it.

I'm a filthy thread tourist and wasn't aware of the lengths people go to cheat in their goyslop video game. I'll admit I was speaking out of my depth on the matter and I apologize. I'm a lot more familiar with crack and tamper analysis than modern anti-cheat.

That being said, kernel anti-cheat is still retarded. if you're giving Riot Games the same level of access to your computer as the operating system, you deserve everything that happens to it (and you)

 

[jeff7989]

I'm waiting for one person to explain why kernel level cheating with Chinese gray market devices is good and safe but kernel level cheat prevention is bad and dangerous.

Same people who are mocking Denuvo bypass users for owning their whole machine btw.

 

[Gobermental Supervisor]

Oh, so just make malware illegal. Why hadn't anyone thought of that before.

What most people here also completely ignore is that the majority of professional cheaters are asian outfits rigging online tournaments with prize money.
The hardware cheat devices exist to circumvent anti-cheat in online tournament play, and the devices are updated shortly before tournaments and playoffs with new data to avoid detection.

So what is anyone gonna do about some chinks destroying gaming for everyone else? Sue them?

Nah, bricking their devices is EXACTLY how you get them. Make the business unprofitable by destroying their hardware, which they have to invest in.

EDIT: Thanks to Asian currencies being constantly devalued to rig the export prices for US/EU buying power, it means the minor prizes played for in recreational tournaments are pretty decent payouts if you live on the Philippines or in China for example. So they cheat to make a living, and kill the game for other players as a side-effect.

 

[Day of the Cope]

me, getting gunned down by the Parker-Brothers for taking an extra $100 in Monopoly

 

[Lorkhan187]

My experience with the horrible anti cheat for Riot Games drove me to no longer play League or Valorant. This is purely anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, its entirely possible that there's something on my end that was wrong and I could've done to fix it but from everything I looked up it tells me that this was Vanguard fucking with my PC:


About 1-2 years ago I had a PC with one of the botched 13th and 14th gen i7's. I noticed it a bit late in after a few failed overclocking attempts, and even when i switched it back to Intel's default settings after the microcode and stability BIOS updates. After trying to find the problem and see if i could salvage the CPU I noticed that whenever my PC would bluescreen it would say the vanguard program was the cause of the Bluescreen, consistently every time after i reset my OC, it would never be any of the other errors or a long line of numbers saying something else with the system fucked up. I tried a few different things such as closing vanguard on system launch or preventing it from opening and those sessions with my PC on i'd never run into a issue not even doing stress tests on Cinebench and other programs. So i uninstalled league, vanguard and the riot games launcher including vanguard since i rarely play either anymore and if this shitty Chinese spyware was literally causing my PC to crash anytime i wanted to play a different game that was a bit taxing on my PC.


Since I uninstalled it i've not had a single blue screen not even when fiddling with light overclocking tweaks, so the only conclusion I can come to is the fucking spyware constantly running 24/7 was exploiting the hardware faults and stressing my PC to the point of crashing when i played some games. Seeing the reports on Deadlock and now this just makes me think that this shitty anti-cheat is full of problems like everything else Riot does. Like I said, its entirely possible that i had a retard moment with my old PC and overlooked something but thats my experience with Vanguard actively fucking with me, I dont cheat on multiplayer games or have any software like that, or had any of the crash screens like the ones circulating with the recent controversy, and even if I didn't after this news im definetely never playing another game from riot requiring their anti-cheat.

 

[Psyker]

"Let's just do things how they were 30 years ago!" cool story bro, but it's not 1999 anymore, no one's throwing LAN parties in their basement. What you're not understanding is that people genuinely enjoy this format of game, it's not being forced on anyone, they could just not play the game. These games are designed to be exclusively competitive, they're designed around centralized developer control and rulesets. People like seeing their rank go up and they like climbing a global leaderboard, but the only thing that gives those rankings meaning is the knowledge that (generally speaking) every person on the game is on a level playing field. Like I mentioned, I don't play competitive games, they're all dogshit, but what we have today is an evolution of what you're reminiscing about. Gaming, and especially competitive gaming, have grown exponentially in the past two decades, and the landscape has entirely shifted. "People should just like what I like" is not an actual solution.

"The gaming world has changed because the developers are making new kinds of video games people enjoy... it's very different from how video games used to be. However video games can never go back to the way they were, which also made money and people enjoyed, because the developers changed the way it all works." In other words, you're implying this whole process only moves on one direction. You're also implying that the situation we have now is somehow a direct innovation over the old one when the exact opposite is true, it's worse in basically every way.

If people want to play a game competitively and compete to be the best, that will always exist. It does not require game developers to do anything other than create a fun video game people willingly play. I can't begin to list all the competitively-viable games that existed prior to online leaderboards, matchmaking or any of that shit controlled by the devs.

What most people here also completely ignore is that the majority of professional cheaters are asian outfits rigging online tournaments with prize money.
The hardware cheat devices exist to circumvent anti-cheat in online tournament play, and the devices are updated shortly before tournaments and playoffs with new data to avoid detection.

So what is anyone gonna do about some chinks destroying gaming for everyone else? Sue them?

You ban them. "China is not allowed to purchase nor connect to our game. If we find you are Chinese we will immediately delete your account. If you have a problem with this, talk to your government for preventing us from suing cheat developers who we've found are all Chinese." Unthinkable I know, since game developers chase profit margins above all else nowadays.

 

[Indrick Boreale]

You ban them. "China is not allowed to purchase nor connect to our game. If we find you are Chinese we will immediately delete your account. If you have a problem with this, talk to your government for preventing us from suing cheat developers who we've found are all Chinese." Unthinkable I know, since game developers chase profit margins above all else nowadays.

Let them stick to their loli/waifu gacha slop and piss off the Western gaming world.

 

[scubain]

"The gaming world has changed because the developers are making new kinds of video games people enjoy... it's very different from how video games used to be. However video games can never go back to the way they were, which also made money and people enjoyed, because the developers changed the way it all works." In other words, you're implying this whole process only moves on one direction. You're also implying that the situation we have now is somehow a direct innovation over the old one when the exact opposite is true, it's worse in basically every way.

If people want to play a game competitively and compete to be the best, that will always exist. It does not require game developers to do anything other than create a fun video game people willingly play. I can't begin to list all the competitively-viable games that existed prior to online leaderboards, matchmaking or any of that shit controlled by the devs.

Sure, there are competitively viable games that didn't rely on these systems, TF2 was and still is an example of this, but players had to fight against the game to mold it into the form they wanted it to be in for competition (In the words of ZestyJesus, "Competitive TF2 is a different game"). This obviously means there is a market for games pre-molded into this shape and designed to appeal to these groups who want an organized, fair, and skill-based competitive system. This is why I'm saying these systems are an evolution; they were a response to both rising and changing demand.
I'm sure you and many others would go fucking nuts over a fun casual game with core systems that could then be made competitive (TF2 is still my only reference point for this since I never played many shooters, but this is what they did), but these niche communities that formed around making games competitive and serious is exactly why we have the games we do now. You may think this system is worse in every way because nostalgia has you by the balls, but this system is just a response to the rapidly growing competitive community. Whether it's worse or better is of course le subjective, but I'll clarify that I think it's objectively better for the current gaming landscape. Old video games did make money, but they're making a hell of a lot more money off of a hell of a lot more people now because these systems appeal to the much, much wider audiences playing these types of games. It should be obvious that the market chose this system over the old ways, which aren't objectively better based solely on the fact that they were the old ways.
CS2 does still allow you to play competitively in basically the exact way you're describing, since it offers far greater player agency than Valorant, but there are still people who choose to play CS2's competitive mode and many people who play Valorant exclusively, because they prefer these centralized systems.
Also keep in mind that Valorant was never meant to be the kind of game you want to play, it's never had any community server support whatsoever, if it was a direct downgrade from the old system then I can't see how it could have possibly exploded in the way it did.

 

[Schlomo Silverscreenblatt]

this wouldn't have happened if they just let people make community servers

 

[The Ugly One]

I figure it's marking it to tell itself "hey I recognise this hardware and I know it's harmful so I don't want to ever load you" any time it detects it.

This is exactly what is happening.

A DMA card (typically some flavor of FGPA) in the gaming PC. This card imitates an innocuous piece of hardware (e.g. an NVME drive) and has 'Direct Memory Access' on the system. Meaning it can read any area of the gaming PC's memory at will.

this sounds like a really safe thing, it should be against the law for computer security to stop this

Plenty of other methods exist to achieve the result Riot Games wants without resorting to measures that could potentially compromise anyone's hardware

Name one.

if you actually understand what's going on

Understanding how computers work past a surface level isn't on anyone's agenda here.

I have the right to use hardware in whatever way I please. If that conflicts with the TOS of a live service software, they're well within their right to impede it, so long as nothing in my hardware/software gets touched without my consent.

You consented to have malware-like devices blocked when you activated IOMMU in your BIOS. Turn it off if you don't want that to happen. You consented to allow Riot to notify your OS that malware-like devices are attacking the system by accepting the EULA in Valorant. Uninstall Valorant if you don't want your OS notified that your $6000 Valorcheat card is sitting in the PCIe slot.

 

[Breahna]

How is your system put in danger by blocking spoofed devices that inject code into memory windows they aren't supposed to have access to?

These are the kinds of people who apply for a passport and do their banking on the Starbucks wi-fi, I don't know what you expect

How is your system put in danger by blocking spoofed devices that inject code into memory windows they aren't supposed to have access to?

Spoofed devices should be blocked. I also think giving that level of access to a game anti-cheat is retarded.
Then again, if you're running dma cards from some chinese chop shop coded by Ivan and you don't care about security all that much anyway

 

[Psyker]

You may think this system is worse in every way because nostalgia has you by the balls, but this system is just a response to the rapidly growing competitive community. Whether it's worse or better is of course le subjective, but I'll clarify that I think it's objectively better for the current gaming landscape.

There's no reason to believe this at all. Not only are we in a thread discussing a situation where game developers are using their competitively-oriented bullshit to implement legal malware and excuse bricking hardware (regardless of whether or not you think the victim "deserves it") but both sides of the issue are insufferable idiots, driving just how much video games have regressed from their original goal of "thing that is fun and you can play with friends." Esports in general played a huge role in killing the longevity and general fun of modern games, especially online ones, and especially shooters. This isn't subjective at all. You agree with me:

Also keep in mind that Valorant was never meant to be the kind of game you want to play, it's never had any community server support whatsoever, if it was a direct downgrade from the old system then I can't see how it could have possibly exploded in the way it did.

We have a situation where "a game nobody wants to play", developed by soulless Esport-chasing marketers, played by soulless Esport-chasing adderall abusers, has decided it's acceptable to deliberately ruin a customer's physical objects in the name of preserving an online rank system. Riot Games is pathetic. The rank-obsessed cheaters are pathetic. Anyone excusing this or deciding it's not a total regression of video games as a medium is pathetic.

 

[niggerbabycrusher1488]

palestine vs israel type ass conflict, fuck riot but also fuck cheaters to death, they deserve this.

 

[CertifiedFedBot]

Fun thing is that you can use the tweet against Riot games in all future endeavors, even better if you just frame it as "remember when you bricked people's PCs and laughed about it". Kind of like how Hasan is now known as the "dog torturer" by normies, if this is kept up Riot games will be known as "that malware company".

inb4: "That's dishonest framing, reee!"
Fuck corponiggers, smash a corponigger into the concrete and so forth.

 

[WhatIsThePunchline]

Nope, all the hardware was still 100% functional

Doesn't matter if it breaks the hardware or the software.

The only people in this thread who can actually explain what happened on a technical level agree with me. The people who disagree with me are consistently unable to explain what happened and even getting basic technical details wrong, like claiming the hardware itself was damaged. Just like how in the TPM argument, nobody who disagreed with me understood what a TPM does. They just knew it was bad because it involves cryptography and Microsoft, and that makes it evil.

Okay, so explain what Windows should be allowed to do when an unsigned device spoofs a legit device and tries to inject code into a running program's memory.

Barely anyone in this thread agrees with you, people are incidentally poking holes in your reasoning while discussing completely unrelated things',lots of shit you've said has turned out to be immediately incorrect, your shit opinions on TPM are not relevant , and your supposed expertize in the area is rather unimpressive considering you just keep restating blatantly wrong things.

What windows should do- it's a fucking video game. Do nothing, it doesn't matter, let them cheat. If they want to fuck with their process, running on their system fucking let them. If you can't protect a game without being a slimy fuck about it then don't make multiplayer games. No admin access, no kernel access, no company ramming your hands up your ass, no one escorting you off your own property, take your safety concerns and choke on them.

You want competitive games without cheating you let people run their own lobbies, ideally own private servers and ban whoever they like. People are completely able to self moderate, given basic tools to do so.

 

[klab]

this sounds like a really safe thing, it should be against the law for computer security to stop this

The worst part is how people here are essentially Twitter nigger transplants. They argue the same way, not understanding what was affected or how, and lack any empathy or higher-level thinking. They also enter a thread titled VALORANT and get mad when it's about something they don't like anyway.

"that malware company"

Riot Games is more colloquially known as the company whose games have the fewest cheaters.
Look at Escape from Tarkov or CSGO (now known as CS2) as a case study of how bad cheaters fuck a game.

We have a situation where "a game nobody wants to play", developed by soulless Esport-chasing marketers, played by soulless Esport-chasing adderall abusers, has decided it's acceptable to deliberately ruin a customer's physical objects in the name of preserving an online rank system. Riot Games is pathetic. The rank-obsessed cheaters are pathetic. Anyone excusing this or deciding it's not a total regression of video games as a medium is pathetic.

The "physical objects" aren't ruined. Reinstall your OS and use your DMA card to cheat on Tarkov instead, without installing Vanguard.
You are not a child. You're an adult who can consent to legally binding contracts. You're even allowed to vote. You own your hardware; you own your software to some extent; and you have allowed a corporation to manage your software in some way.
Better yet, get a refund on the DMA card. I'm sure the seller will reimburse you with their generous warranty and sue Riot Games for lost business.
>"preserving an online rank system"
The sanctity of online play as a whole, whether or not rank is involved. People still spend time playing matches and don't want them ruined by cheating software and hardware.
It's more so money that has ruined online gaming - every FPS is a potential pro career, content creator come-up, or boosting/cheating service hustle. You're conflating a much more profound argument with the one you're actually trying to make, which is just a rehash of what other people have said already.

 

[Ralph’s Shack]

From the forum post in notorietus' first screenshot
View attachment 9042233
They're doing something to fry core isolation in Windows and basically wreck your OS install.

Link to post on the actual cheating site

Spoiler: CHEAT LINK

https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/4686050-post8.html

 

[klab]

Link to post on the actual cheating site

Spoiler: CHEAT LINK

https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/4686050-post8.html

https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/...vgk-update-locked-dma-firmware-sata-nvme.html
It's better to have the entire thread anyway.

But yeah, the thread proves that the software/hardware isn't broken. The DMA just can't find a valid device anymore.

https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/...ts-vanguard-update-bricking-cheaters-pcs.html

The cheaters in this forum display a higher level of intelligence than the average poster in this thread.

Spoiler: Bonus

 

[some dumb cunt]

I couldn't care less what they do to retards that spend thousands of dollars just to fucking cheat, but at the same time. why the fuck should i basically install a rootkit because retard over here wants to hit grandmasters with his fancy hardware, fuck all of them.

because its either the rootkit or the faggot hitting his virtual medal, and the silent majority decreed it be the rootkit. your choice at this point is to not play or accept the rootkit. for me valorant is not a game worth that risk, it would have to be something on the level of release ps2 or at least bfbc2.