Overview
- Users reported that a recent Vanguard update detects and makes many DMA‑based cheating boards unusable by targeting their SATA and NVMe firmware, with some saying the only apparent remedy was a full OS reinstall.
- Riot’s official anti‑cheat account and an in‑house analyst publicly celebrated the results, posting images and messages calling affected devices expensive 'paperweights' and 'bricks'.
- The affected hardware are DMA devices that plug into a PC to access memory directly and bypass kernel‑level protections, and reports say Vanguard triggered IOMMU restart warnings that left firmware nonfunctional on some boards.
- Community response is split between players who welcome a tougher stance on cheating and critics who say deliberately disabling third‑party hardware could be illegal or trigger class actions, while others note some devices may be repairable or work again on different PCs.
- The update revives long‑running concerns about Vanguard’s mandatory kernel‑level access to Windows systems and raises new questions about liability, user consent, and whether regulators or courts will weigh in.