Talented crackers strapped for cash amid the current economic downturn should turn their attention to upcoming multiplayer shooter Valorant, as developer Riot Games is willing to pay players $100,000 for discovering anti-cheat exploits. Riot Games' choice of anti-cheat software is less than popular with players over privacy concerns, but the company is putting its money where its mouth in order to keep cheaters out of the competitive hero shooter.
A lore-driven competitive FPS in the tradition of Overwatch, Valorant is Riot Games' hopeful next big thing after the cultural phenomenon that was last decade's League of Legends. Its recent closed beta was a smashing success on Twitch, and players are excited to get their hands on the free-to-play title later this year. While most players who pay for or otherwise obtain cheat software are justifiably seen as lazy, the creators of cheat software work ferociously hard and fast, as hackers were already wreaking havoc during the Valorant closed beta. No stranger to the cheating underbelly of online gaming, Riot Games is focusing its efforts on nipping the problem in the bud before the game launches.
Riot is going all in on its Vanguard anti-cheat system for Valorant, despite the fact that players dislike that the software demands permissions that could allow it to collect user data not related to the game. The developer staunchly denies the validity of privacy concerns, but it's meeting players in the middle by paying top dollar to ensure that Vanguard is at least competent in cheat prevention. On HackerOne, where software developers regularly turn to crackers' expertise to identify vulnerabilities in their products, Riot Games is offering anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 for Vanguard exploit discoveries related to "local" and "network attacks."
Riot's already gotten off to a mildly rocky start with streamers, esports athletes, and fans over Vanguard and other issues, so the pressure is on for the developer to ensure that Valorant hits the ground running. Countless competitive games have earned unsavory reputations as cheater havens, and it's not a label that Riot is keen to have plastered on their new IP as it enters an already over-saturated hero shooter market.
Whether Vanguard pans out or not when Valorant launches sometime this year is anyone's guess, though Riot's apparent fervor for beating back cheaters before they get a solid foothold is definitely reassuring. Vanguard turning out to effective at its job could only be possibly made better by further guarantees that protecting Valorant's colorful cast of heroes from player abuse will be the only focus of the allegedly invasive program.
Source: HackerOne
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April 19, 2020 at 08:27AM
