Valorant is still in closed beta, but that hasn't stopped cheaters from doing what they do, and Riot is trying to put a stop to the cheating, mainly through the Vanguard system, which is controversial. If you want to play Valorant, you will need to re-enable or reinstall it.

Controversial or not, the system seems to be working, as Phillip Koskinas, Riot's anti-cheat data engineer, said today on Twitter that the studio recently sent about 8,900 Valorant cheaters to Ban hammer down, he said. There is no way to determine this number as a percentage since the number of people actually playing in the closed beta is unknown, but even if it is a small fraction of the overall player count, 8,900 cheaters down is a step in the right direction.

Koskinas did not elaborate on how the ban system works, but in a separate tweet he stated that it is not a ban on hardware IDs, but on the specific hardware that runs the game. He also acknowledged that determined cheaters "will eventually figure it out," but added that it is not "easy" to circumvent the ban.

And there will be more to come: Matt Paoletti, RiotK3o, Riot's senior anti-cheat analyst, retweeted a similar ominous warning on Reddit, saying, "This is just the beginning."

Riot also dropped a new Valorant patch today, making changes to a number of characters. Viper's snakebite radius has been increased to bring it in line with other area denial abilities, and Sage's slow orbs have been nerfed significantly.

"It's no secret that Sage is OP. We decided to try to reduce some of her stopping power while still allowing her to be the best stalwart in Valorant," Riot explained." These changes are intended to reduce the overall effectiveness of her Slow Orb.

Numerous bug fixes and gameplay tweaks have been made, and Valorant's "quality of life" changes mean that "cheaters are no longer called 'hackers. The full patch notes can be found at playvalorant.com.