Is Valorant safe?
Is Valorant safe?
In short, I downloaded CSGO on Steam just to see how it performed with my setup—it worked fine, but honestly, I don’t like it much. My friend who plays Valorant insists I should give it a try if I enjoy CSGO. The problem is, once I started downloading, security alerts popped up everywhere, and even my antivirus flagged the installer. It seems the game poses a significant security risk by letting Riot gain access to my system. Given what I’ve read about its vulnerabilities, should I worry about the potential dangers, or is this overblown?
The Vanguard anticheat appears suspicious because it sets up itself and acts like a root kit. However, unless the code is examined more carefully or TenCent triggers it, its main goal—besides preventing cheating—is still unclear.
I have been doing some reading about it online and there seems to be ZERO consensus about the reality of it's security. I read an article or two saying you could disable/uninstall the Vanguard thing, but that simply is not true. It just reinstalls it when you open the game the next time.
I guess at the very least, the uninstaller seems to get rid of it, unlike a virus, in that when I uninstalled it and the game I went back to check for it's running process and it was not there. I went ahead and ran a virus scan behind it as well.
At the very least, if the gaming company wants to run a scraper they could at least shut it off when you aren't playing.