How Riot Games fights back against cheaters

Sunday, May 4, 2025 Posted by bloggerdaddy

Sunday, May 4, 2025

Image Credits: Riot Games/YouTube

As video games have become more competitive and professionalized, there's more pressure on developers to beef up their anti-cheating efforts. Among the most notable tools: Vanguard, a kernel-level anti-cheat system developed by Riot Games.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai spoke to Riot's head of anti-cheat Phillip Koskinas about how the company can make cheat developers "look like fools." And while Koskinas describes himself as someone who was "put on this earth for the one singular purpose of banning cheaters from online video games," he also acknowledged that his team actually allows a little bit of cheating, within reason.

"To keep cheating dumb, we ban slower," he said.

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this weekend.

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What else we're reading 📗

In his Spyglass newsletter, M.G. Siegler examines this week's big court ruling against Apple, using an extended "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" metaphor to explain how Tim Cook chose poorly — and argue that the Apple CEO can now make a better choice by cutting App Store fees and opening up web distribution for apps.

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