Riot's latest blog post on Valorant reveals some of the developer's efforts to combat cheaters. Catching cheaters has been one of Riot's main priorities since before the game was released, which is not surprising given the prevalence of cheats in competitive shooters.

Most notably, Riot checked players' accounts one by one in the online tournament First Strike.

Matt 'K30' Paoletti is a senior anti-cheat analyst at Riot and believes that "we had a decent success first and learned a lot for next time."

But big tournament logistics and day-to-day matchmaking are two very different things, and Paoletti details what Riot is trying to do to target players who cheat in matchmaking, an interesting aspect of which is that Target is his complete disdain for the "target.

The number of matches with cheaters is "a few percent," but Riot admits that this is still too high, stating that "the highest ranking cheaters also tarnish the reputation that comes with reaching such heights in a competitive game." Some players also sought to take advantage of the ill-gotten gains made by cheaters by teaming up with them.

This type of behavior, which includes playing with hack-based cheaters or just smurf accounts, is colloquially known as "bashing," and Riot will impose a 90-day penalty on players who participate in this type of behavior, as well as a 90-day penalty for innocent players affected by this behavior. The company is looking at ways to readjust ranks for players; Paoletti later clarified that this would target boosting services in a precise manner and should not affect "innocent" players, but, of course, the proof is in the pudding.

Paoletti's dislike of cheaters is really funny. He describes queuing with Cheetah as "riding the cheat bus on the highway to hell" and further describes it as an "expensive addiction." Rank should be an indication of your skills, not your ability to pay for services."

One solution is to change the speed at which players can rank in placement and reduce the speed at which they reach Radiant rank." This will help prevent cheaters from spending their birthday money on cheats." Paoletti wrote.

Valorant's anti-cheat software, Vanguard, has been the subject of controversy since before the game's release because of its use of kernel mode drivers. Such tradeoffs are up to each player, but it appears that Riot is helping to make cheating in Valorant (a) harder and (b) more expensive. I like Riot's willingness to take on a war with no end in sight. My new hero, Paoletti, concludes: "Sadly, there will always be cheaters, but cheaters never prosper.