Rollout for LoL’s controversial Vanguard anti-cheat software to begin next update

Riot Games is on the verge of adding its Vanguard anti-cheat system to League of  Legends, despite concerns from players, with the controversial update coming as soon as next update for some regions.

While Riot originally planned to add Vanguard to all League regions simultaneously, changes behind the scenes mean the anti-cheat system will first go live in the Philippines when Patch 14.5 lands on Wednesday, March 6. The early launch in Southeast Asia will give Riot’s engineers more time to “evaluate how Vanguard is functioning” when added to the client before a wide release.

Players in other regions can then expect to see the software, which was originally designed for VALORANT, added to their League programs from Patch 14.6—so long as Riot’s devs don’t uncover anything critical while running the Philippines tests. This may be staged in waves rather than a unified launch on March 20.

“After some time testing the diagnostics check on PBE we’ve elected to change the [Vanguard] rollout plan. Instead of a global rollout, we’re going to be releasing in a single region first, the Phillipines [sic], with patch 14.5,” Riot Prism wrote in the TFT patch notes today.

Riot’s confirmation that Vanguard is still very much on its way has been met with heavy resistance from the League player base. While VALORANT players have now accepted the anti-cheat software, League players are still staunching demanding Riot backflip on the implementation. Many declared it “invasive” while others simply suggested they would uninstall any Riot-associated programs once it goes live.

One of the biggest complaints that continues to pop up in the League world is that many believe cheating is not rampant enough in the title to justify what they see as an “unprecedented level of system invasion and control” from Riot. While botted accounts do appear in normal matches and tutorial lobbies semi-regularly, ranked play sees far less obvious cheating.

The League devs have remained quiet on the vocal Vanguard backlash since it was announced in January. They did respond to complaints in 2020 when the software was first added to VALORANT though, suggesting at the time that the driver “does as few things as possible” whenever it is running,  does not communicate with the internet, and does not collect information from its users.

Vanguard’s League arrival was originally inked in for a global drop in March’s first week, but “critical bugs” put that on the back burner for the time being.