VALORANT Mobile Issues Major Ban Wave After Cheating Crackdown

VALORANT​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ Mobile drove a large-scale ban wave action that is among the most, if not the most, of the ban waves to date, directly addressing Riot's ongoing efforts to keep the game clean and fair, right before the release worldwide. More than 110,000 accounts got a red card displaying the main PC-tier “zero tolerance” policy, which Riot doesn't hesitate to apply to the mobile game, is directly transported to the mobile realm.

This was not a minor cleanup ban operation was targeting the whole gamut of illegal activities from third-party cheats to emulator misuse.

A Massive Cleanup: Full Breakdown of the Ban Wave

Most probably taking the basis from the Vanguard framework, Riot's mobile anti-cheat has identified four major infringements:

• 61,370 bans for cheating: Direct bans of the cheats implanted in cases of the usage of aimbots, wallhacks, and spinbots.
• 29,651 bans for “Party with Cheater”: The market of boosting got hammered hard with this one. Not only were hackers who BOOST, the ones who get helped, and the players who take advantage of that were the only ones punished by the latter ones.
• 17,177 bans for smurfing: Indicated the technology for hardware IDs or performance metrics to pinpoint that high-skilled players have made new accounts (s).
• 3,831 bans for emulator usage: Dismissing players who use keyboard-mouse-like emulators such as BlueStacks to keep touch-only gameplay fair, but people pretend they're playing Valorant normally on their phones.

Why This Matters Ahead of Global Launch

Even though most of the time, VALORANT Mobile is in the process of regional testing (China area), this ban wave is a signal to others. Issues such as cheaters and emulators have been a headache to PUBG and COD for a very long time. Riot's intervention at the very beginning sheds light on that matter.

Particularly, the hard grip on the case of “Party with Cheater” is what carries the most weight. The feature in which a player can plead he was an unknowing accomplice when grouping with the cheater is common among many mobile games; the place where Riot is an exception, abolishing that loophole. Consequently, a teammate cheating will put your account in the danger zone too.

Anti-Cheat on Mobile: Vanguard-Level Enforcement

The extent to which emulators can be pinpointed shows that the security measures are deeply rooted at the client side. Determining one who uses keyboard-mouse input on mobile is not an easy task but Riot successfully banned thousands who were trying to do this. This is a sign that the security systems of VALORANT Mobile are deeply intertwined and may become even more rigorous before worldwide rollout.

For players planning to climb ranks when the game launches, the message is clear: play fair, avoid suspicious teammates, and stick to mobile devices.