Riot now allows you to disable anti-cheat at will

If League of Legends and Appreciation players have the right tools and choose to enter the “pre-boot security system and Windows security tools,” then, starting today, they can change the Vanguard anti-cheat program from regular to “on demand.” With “Vanguard Pre-Check,” the kernel driver will not start when your system does, according to the blog post from Phillip Koskinas, Riot’s head of anti-cheat.

Riot can reveal this new feature after working with the Xbox OS Security Team at Microsoft on a Windows kernel update that blocks the type of drivers and memory that hackers use to use wallhacks, aimbots, triggerbots, and other tools. To solve the problem of knowing if cheats have been uploaded without 24/7 access, Riot is tapping into Windows security called Runtime Driver Attestation Report which relies on a secure list of device drivers that have been uploaded since startup.

Running at least Windows 11 25H2 is part of the requirement, which he says “mainly because the driver certification report was added for the first time in this version, and because, thanks to security advances, it is easier to hack when your operating system is older.”

Pre-Check is optional – “you only need to do everything if you want to show what you want, which will allow Vanguard to start the game and keep it running while you’re playing a Riot title,” says Koskinas. New PCs often post a requirement, and 35 percent of players already meet the requirements to use Vanguard Pre-Check. If you are in that category, you will be able to change the way you want “with your next change.”

Another 65 percent of players will have to make some changes if they want to use Vanguard on-demand to make changes on-demand. According to Koskinas, you should:

“Many new machines these days have already been tested and shipped with these updates by default, so this Vanguard is an incentive for those who want to take advantage of it right now,” says Koskinas. “If it’s not something you want to do, don’t sweat it.”