Riot data suggests 10 percent of LoL’s high Elo games have had cheaters in them

Riot Games’ anti-cheat software, Vanguard, is coming to League of Legends in the near future. While cheaters might seem like a rare occurrence at lower ranks, they’re frustratingly common in high-Elo games.

On April 11, Riot Games released a blog talking about Vanguard coming to League. In one section, the team highlights the number of cheaters at specific ranks since the beginning of 2022. It turns out that in the first half of 2023, more than 10 percent of Master games had a cheater in them.

Obviously, cheaters weren’t exclusive to Master rank. The graph below shows the percentage of games in which a cheater was caught at each rank. Even ranks like Gold and Grandmaster weren’t immune to cheaters, and experienced periods where there was a cheater in more than 10 percent of matches.

The data only includes cheaters that were officially caught and proven to be using illegal software in their games. It’s highly likely the actual number of cheaters is higher, assuming there are cheaters going under the radar without getting caught.

“The polyphonic rainbow you’re now bearing witness to is the percentage of Ranked games completed with a cheater, bucketed by what tier the scripter was in at the end of the game,” the blog reads. “Worse still, we can’t see how that trend continues, because the current anti-cheat is beaten,” Riot added.

With that in mind, it’s all but surprising to see Riot working on implementing Vanguard in League. The exact release date remains unconfirmed at the time of writing, with the developer hardly giving any details in the blog itself. But Riot’s tweet from April 12 says it’s “coming soon,” and the team previously suggested an April launch. With the latest data, which is rather concerning, we hope it’s rather sooner than later.