Riot now lets you enable its anti-cheat when you want to
You’ll now be able to use Vanguard on demand instead of having it always running in the background.
You’ll now be able to use Vanguard on demand instead of having it always running in the background.
by Jun 24, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC
Image: Riot Games
Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
If League of Legends and Valorant players have the right hardware and elect to opt into “pre-boot security mechanisms and Windows’ own native protection features,” then, starting today, they can switch the Vanguard anti-cheat software from always-on to one that’s “on demand.” With “Vanguard Pre-Check,” the kernel-level driver won’t launch when your system does, according to a blog post from Phillip Koskinas, Riot’s head of anti-cheat.
Riot is able to introduce this new feature now after working with the Xbox OS Security Team at Microsoft on improvements to the Windows kernel that lock out the kind of driver and memory exploits that cheats use to employ wallhacks, aimbot, triggerbot, and other tools. To solve the problem of knowing if cheats have been loaded without running 24/7, Riot is tapping into a Windows security feature called the Runtime Driver Attestation Report that it relies on for a secured list of the device drivers loaded since boot.
Running at least Windows 11 25H2 is part of the requirement, which he says is “mostly because the driver attestation report was only initially added in this version, but it’s also because, due to the natural progression of security, it gets more convenient to cheat the older your operating system is.”
Pre-Check is optional — “you only need to do anything if you’d like to enable on-demand mode, which will allow Vanguard to launch when the game does and remain running only while you’re playing a Riot title,” Koskinas says. Newer PCs typically ship with the required features enabled, and 35 percent of players already meet the requirements to use Vanguard Pre-Check. If you’re in that group, you’ll be able to switch to on-demand mode “with your very next update.”
The other 65 percent of players will have to make some changes if they want to use Vanguard on-demand to flip on the on-demand mode. According to Koskinas, you’ll need to:
- Be running at least Windows 11 25H2. This requirement means you’ll have to have UEFI Mode and Secure Boot enabled, as well as Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM).
- Use Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) and Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity (HVCI)
- Enable Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU)
“Most new machines today are already tested and shipped with these settings enabled by default, so this Vanguard update is only an optional incentive for those that wish to take advantage of it right now,” Koskinas says. “If that isn’t something you want to do, don’t sweat it.”
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