This is why VALORANT Is Getting More Cheaters

Written by: Wei

30/01/2025

Valorant’s anti-cheat system, Vanguard, is one of the toughest in gaming, but even it can’t completely stop cheaters from sneaking in. Despite banning a record number of accounts, Riot Games admits that running into a cheater at some point is inevitable.

Over the holidays, players noticed an increase in cheaters, likely because the developers were on break. The developers of Vanguard confirmed, that the number of cheaters actually increased. However, once Riot was back in action, they cracked down hard.

Record-Breaking Ban Wave

Phillip Koskinas, Valorant’s head of anti-cheat, revealed that Riot banned more cheaters than ever in early January. “You’ll eventually run into a cheater, but we’ll just keep banning them over and over again until they finally give up and uninstall,” Koskinas said on social media.

From January 10th to 13th, Riot banned nearly seven accounts per minute—the highest rate in the game’s history.

Now that Riot’s back in full swing, the percentage of ranked games with a cheater has dropped below 1% globally.

Cheating Trends by Region

While cheating happens everywhere, some regions face unique challenges:

Brazil: The country saw a major spike in cheaters, with 10% of ranked games affected at one point. This was due to the rise of “pixelbots” (or “colorbots”), which use computer vision to recognize enemy outlines and automatically adjust aim. Fortunately, these cheats are easy to detect, and Riot swiftly removed most of them.
Korea: Since Korean players need a national ID to game, bans hit harder—cheaters must get entirely new identities to keep playing.
Asia-Pacific: Many cheaters from China use VPNs to bypass ID requirements and play on other servers. Riot is working on better ways to block them.
North America: Cheaters here favor expensive hardware-based cheats that can cost over $1,000. Though marketed as “undetectable,” Riot regularly shuts them down with monthly ban waves.

vang_bans_sec

Europe: Kernel-based cheats, disguised under fake business names like “Gary’s Pool Professionals,” have made a comeback. These aren’t subtle, making them easier for Riot to detect.
Turkey: Many PC cafes have cheats pre-installed, either by previous customers or even the owners themselves. Riot has started removing ban immunity from cafes with repeated offenses.
Latin America: Like Brazil, this region has a lot of pixelbot users, but the required hardware isn’t widespread, making it easier to catch cheaters early.

Riot Is Winning The War Against Cheaters

While cheater numbers did increase, Riot did not give up and let them win. Alongside the banwaves and new measures, Riot is dedicating a bounty to further improve their system and ensure Vanguard gets only better from here.

That's not all, VALORANT is also set to have Ranked Rollbacks which will grant you back your rank rating if you lost a game and any player on that game got banned, at any point of time. These upcoming changes are awesome and will only better the experience of the game.