From time and again, Riot Games has found itself at the centre of controversies over Vanguard, its kernel-level anti-cheat software baked into League of Legends and Valorant. Gamers have repeatedly raised privacy concerns over the fact that, since its introduction, the driver has been made to load automatically every time Windows boots, whether you plan to game that day or not.
Moving forward, that’s set to change. Riot has introduced Vanguard On-Demand, a new optional mode that lets the anti-cheat driver launch only when a supported Riot game opens, and shuts itself down once the session ends. However, there’s a catch.
The catch is that not everyone qualifies to use the Vanguard On-Demand feature right away. Only players who are running Windows 11 version 25H2 or later, with UEFI Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, Virtualization-Based Security, Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity, and IOMMU all enabled, are allowed to use this newly implemented feature.
Riot anti-cheat lead Phillip Koskinas confirmed that roughly 35% of players already meet those requirements, and that number is only expected to climb as newer hardware becomes more common.
Riot also introduced a redesigned tray app for Vanguard to help players identify missing requirements and walk them through enabling the necessary settings.
Crucially, none of this is forced. Anyone who wants Vanguard to keep running as it always has can simply leave the setup alone, no pressure to change a thing.
It’s a small but meaningful step toward reducing Vanguard’s invasiveness while giving players back a bit of control over their own machines.