Following report surfaced that Riot's Vanguard anti-cheat was apparently soft-bricking certain hardware often used for cheating, Riot has updated Vanguard with a new on-demand mode that allows users to disable the anti-cheat mode from launching on boot. According to a blog post about the update, on-demand mode will only launch Vanguard when it's needed by a game like League of Legends or Valorant. This should theoretically allow for faster boot times and slightly reduced system resource usage on Windows PCs with Vanguard installed. However, Vanguard on-demand mode is only possible in cases wherein player hardware meets a set of security standards that Riot calls a Vanguard Pre-Check.

The Pre-Check, and thus Vanguard On-Demand mode, requires that players are running Windows 11 version 25H2 or newer and enable Secure Boot, TPM 2.0. IOMMU, VBS, and Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity. All of these security measures basically allow Riot to ensure that no kernel-level cheats have been enabled between when the system booted and when Vanguard was launched. Riot says that around 35% of Vanguard user systems are already in a "secured-core state," meaning they meet all the requirements and will be able to enable On-Demand mode with the next Vanguard update, however, those who have one or more of the aforementioned UEFI settings disabled will have to go through the Pre-Check before being able to enable On-Demand.

Since the launch of Marathon, there have been a number of reports and complaints about cheating in Bungie's PvPvE extraction shooter, and in response to these complaints, Bungie has taken to social media site X to detail its anti-cheat systems and explain what the development team plans to do to improve the situation going forward. Bungie starts off by reiterating its zero-tolerance policy for cheating in Marathon, confirming that once a cheater is detected, they will be banned from the game forever, but it goes on to explain that cheating is a "continuous cycle of monitoring, improving, and responding."

Bungie goes on to say that it has already implemented some improvements to its anti-cheat systems, but that the development team is working on several new features that will make it easier to report cheaters and easier to provide evidence of that cheating. For starters, it is making it easier to report cheaters both in-game and with web tools, and it is working on tools to give players feedback when their reports result in actions from the anti-cheat system. Bungie is also working on tools, like username privacy options, that will make tactics like stream sniping in competitive matches more difficult. The studio encourages players to report cheaters and toxic players with as much evidence as possible, including clips and VODs. The increased complaints of cheating in Marathon come despite the game's use of BattlEye anti-cheat, which has incidentally locked out Steam Deck and Linux users from playing the game.

With Marathon and its upcoming server slam event almost literally just around the corner by now, details have started to emerge about the game's server and anti-cheat configurations. In a new post on the @MarathonTheGame official X account, Bungie has explained the details of Marathon's anti-cheat system. Aside from both kernel- and user-level anti-cheat on clients, it was confirmed that Marathon will have server-side fog of war that will protect against wall hacks, ESP cheats, and loot revealers. The game will also use dedicated servers with authority on key combat and looting actions, meaning the servers will be protected against client-side interference. The anti-cheat announcement also mentions that in the case of a crash or connection loss, players will be able to rejoin the game as soon as the connection is re-established, although they will have to rely on teammates to protect their character.

Most notably, though, Bungie announced that any cheaters caught cheating in Marathon will receive a permanent ban from the game. While an authoritative stance has been well received by the community, there are concerns over BattlEye potentially tagging false positives and banning players who weren't guilty of cheating—an issue that was recently brought up by the Apex Legends community when a player was falsely banned after the new Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike seemingly triggered a ban threshold for gameplay automation.

Rocket League, the popular competitive vehicular soccer game, will soon be getting an anti-cheat implementation, nearly a decade after its original launch. Psyonix announced on the game's official X account that it would be implementing Easy Anti-Cheat in Rocket League in an April update. The justifications for anti-cheat is to prevent DDoS attacks, improve bot detection, and more effectively ban cheaters in games. The announcement comes with a few caveats, though—specifically relating to how the addition of anti-cheat will affect competitive gameplay, offline LAN multiplayer, and gaming on Linux.

Unlike many high-profile EAC implementations, Rocket League will maintain compatibility with the Valve Steam Deck, and by extension other Linux gaming PCs and the upcoming Steam Machine via the Proton compatibility layer. Players will be able to disable EAC for offline play, in cases like local LAN multiplayer, or split-screen multiplayer. Additionally, the EAC implementation will eventually allow players in custom tournaments to run tournament-specific mods, and players will be able to run custom community content with EAC enabled at launch. The announcement also mentions "custom mod-inspired content" coming to Rocket League in the same April update.

Anti-cheat has become a hot-button topic since the launch of Valve's Steam Deck, with many developers now moving to add Linux support to their games to cater to users of Valve's Linux-powered gaming handheld. That said, there are still a handful of large game studios that refuse to accommodate Linux gamers with their multiplayer game launches. With the game's March launch rapidly approaching, the Steam page has officially gone live, revealing that Marathon will use BattlEye kernel-level anti-cheat, which will seemingly rule out compatibility with the Valve Steam Deck and other Linux distributions.

Like many other anti-cheat models, BattlEye does have a Linux compatibility mode, but it's up to the developer to implement support for anti-cheat. Bungie's only other game to use BattlEye is Destiny 2, according to GamingOnLinux, and that does not support Linux—likely an omission based on potential additional workload that would come from supporting Linux, or the perception that Linux is rife with cheaters. Combine that with the fact that there has been no mention of Steam Deck compatibility in the developer's launch announcement, it seems unlikely that Marathon will be playable on Linux. According to the latest Steam Survey, Linux market share continued its slow upward trajectory to 3.8% of the total Steam user base, while Windows 11 lost 0.56%.

As part of the upcoming Monster Hunter Wilds Title 1 update, Capcom plans to introduce a new Arena Quests mode, a ranked, timed multiplayer mode with a competitive leaderboard and in-game cosmetic prizes. In anticipation of the new game mode, Capcom has issued a stern warning to would-be cheaters, and it will be following that up with punitive measures. According to a post on X and a recent blog post about the new game mode, any confirmed cheaters may face repercussions like removal of rewards, disqualification from further participation in Arena Quests, or even account restriction or outright suspension.

Curiously, Capcom seems to be relying on community reporting for its cheater detection, since Monster Hunter Wilds notably does not feature an anti-cheat system. While this means the AAA game runs well on Linux and the Steam Deck alike, it also makes it more difficult to catch cheating players. It also presents the unfortunate side effect of innocent players being caught in the cross fire. Addressing the latter, Capcom says the following: "Individuals who are mistakenly deemed to have committed a prohibited act will not be compensated later with participation and ranking rewards," and it encourages any players who suspect that they have been teamed up with a cheater to leave the quest immediately and report the offending player.

Dear Operator, to maintain a fair gaming environment and improve your experience, G.T.I. Security is committed to fighting every kind of cheat. We previously announced our efforts against DMA cheats. Now, we're introducing our measures against VT cheats.

How VT Cheats Differ from Traditional Cheats
Unlike DMA cheats, VT cheats operate at the hypervisor level and leverage virtualization technology, giving them higher privileges than the security systems. As a result, VT cheats can virtualize the operating system before the game even starts, thus leaving no traces in the computer's actual operating environment. With its built-in KernelBase anti-cheat toolkit, Delta Force is able to detect and neutralize VT cheats quickly and accurately.

Valve's latest third-person MOBA-like hero shooter, Deadlock, has had a pretty serious cheater problem, despite still being an invite-only public test. While the game has thus far operated on a player reporting system to identify and punish cheaters, a recent game patch has introduced a rather comical—and seemingly effective—anti-cheat system that can either ban cheating players or turn them into frogs until the end of the match.

Valve says that the new anti-cheat system is set up to be fairly conservative at the moment to avoid any false positives. Aside from the new anti-cheat, Deadlock's September 26 update introduced a new hero, Mirage, whose design and gameplay seem rooted in the jinn from Arabic myths (aka djinn or genie) and added a pretty vast collection of gameplay updates, balances, and quality-of-life improvements throughout the game.

Valve's latest arena shooter Deadlock has been generating hype for a long time, with recent concurrent player counts exceeding 170,000 at one point, according to SteamDB. More recently, however, reports indicate that cheaters are already invading Deadlock, despite the fact that the game is still in invite-only public alpha testing.

As shown in a recent Reddit post containing a kill-cam video from Deadlock, a supposed cheater very brazenly appears to use a wall hack to track an enemy through a wall and pre-emptively dodge an attack. In the clip, the gamer who spotted the alleged infraction, this isn't even the first time they have encountered the same cheater in-game, and there are countless reports on both Reddit and the Deadlock forum reporting similar experiences.

The Call of Duty RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team announced earlier this month that their newly updated system was capable of detecting "third-party hardware devices that alter the Call of Duty gameplay experience" - this makes reference to a plethora of gaming input modification devices including the Cronus Zen/Max, XIM Apex and FPS Boost Strike Pack. All readily available from direct stores, Amazon and various e-tailers. These hardware modules are hooked up to a gamepad or mouse plus keyboard combination, and allow the user to bypass the legitimate control input detection on the host hardware, be it a games console or PC. Stock scripts and macros can be utilized - for example - to boost in-game aim assist to unprecedented levels, mitigate weapon recoil, and add support for mouse and keyboard in otherwise non-compatible games. Anti-cheat software suites have been unable to detect the extra layer of code, since it runs on an external device - until now.

CoD's security team elaborates on their cheat spotter: "Since our previous progress report, TeamRICOCHET has developed and tested a detection for third-party hardware devices that alter the Call of Duty gameplay experience. These devices act as a passthrough for controllers on PC and console and, when used improperly or maliciously, can provide a player with the ability to gain an unfair gameplay advantage, such as reducing or eliminating recoil. Testing is complete: This detection is deployed globally on all platforms. Users across PC or console who are detected to be using third-party hardware devices to impact the Modern Warfare II or Warzone 2.0 gameplay experience will first see a warning about the improper use of these devices..."

One thing that phenomenon games like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds can boast of is an extraordinary number of active players at any given time (there's been in excess of 3 million active players at one point in time already). This is mostly due to the multiplayer, competitive nature of the game; and where there's competition, there's ways (and ways) of trying to trump it. In a blog post, PUBG developers have taken an open stance on the issue of cheaters, which continues to be one of the most harrowing plagues in PUBG. And the results are in: PUBG has detected "over 100,000 instances of the new pattern related to use of cheat and now we have confirmed that it was clearly an attempt of compromising our game." And for those, players, there's only one solution: "these players will be permanently banned in a single wave."

That more players will be banned than many games have players at any one point in their longevity is already impressive enough. However, PUBG's dedication to maintain its game in a fun, fair state has become a torch of sorts for the company: "We will continue to check the data logs like this even if it means the anti-cheat team has to filter through hundreds of billions of data logs manually. In addition, we are looking into adopting a new solution to detect and ban more cheaters and we have been continuously strengthening our security systems. We have also liaised with investigative authorities in some countries to take legal actions against developers and distributors of cheats. We are determined to take strong measures against them going forward." Et tu, cheaters? Ready to feel the banhammer of righteousness?

Playing against hackers and cheaters in multiplayer games is rarely fun, so now Rockstar is showing them just how it feels. It's hit upon a cruel and unusual punishment for cheaters in Max Payne 3's multiplayer: forcing them to play in a "Cheaters Pool" filled only with other hoodlums. "Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a 'Cheaters Pool', where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants," Rockstar explains in a blog post. They'll also be cut from the leaderboards. Rockstar could deign to allow these rapscallions to rejoin civilised society, but will permaban them for a second infraction. Lets hope that one day all online games will adopt such measures.

If online gaming wasn't hard enough a game-hacking site called Artificial Aiming has some members that are now targeting innocent players for Punkbuster bans in Battlefield 3. They were able to do this by corrupting a streaming Punkbuster ban list shared by certain server admins. A junior member from the Artificial Aiming forums that took the lead on this attack is focusing on servers that use GGC-Stream. He is are quoted as saying,

"We have selected ggc-stream as the target since they have the most streaming bf3 servers and makes it very easy to add fake bans. In 2011 we hit them with a mass ban wave and now were are banning real players from battlelog while ggc-stream is totally unaware. We have framed 150+ bf3 players alone"