Riot will shut down third-party Valorant apps that give players an early advantage in character selection.

Unofficial companion apps for multiplayer games usually exist to provide enhanced (and harmless) status tracking and live ranking insights. Recon Bolt, created by Swiss developer Julian Dunskus, drew the ire of Riot due to its most unique feature: the ability to lock in characters on cell phones (discovered by Dexerto) before the option is available on PC.

Recon Bolt has been running since at least October 2022, but this week Dunskus announced on his Discord server that he was shutting down the app after receiving a cease-and-desist notice from Riot.

"It is hard to express how disappointed I am that things have turned out this way, but Riot has shut down all attempts on my part to have a conversation about this and figure out a way forward together," Dunskus wrote.

Dunskus told PC Gamer that Recon Bolt has been downloaded more than 338,000 times since its release, with an average monthly user count of about 88,000. The app goes offline tomorrow, July 20, on both iOS and Github.

"Thank you so much for all your support while the app has existed, it has been a pleasure to work with you.

Riot has not openly shared the reason for the requested shutdown, but Dunskus told PC Gamer that the studio had been trying to shut down Recon Bolt for months; when asked why it was shut out of Riot's developer portal in May, Riot When asked, a representative cited Recon Bolt's use of unauthorized login tools, character selection shortcuts, and the inclusion of "an item store checker that is not in line with our policies."

Riot may have taken issue with Recon Bolt's premium tier. Last year, Riot reminded players on Twitter that "using unauthorized third-party apps that pull information hidden by the game client may result in a ban."

Allowing players to pre-select their characters before anyone else certainly sounds like what Riot would consider "unauthorized" use of its tools, in other words, cheating, but Dunskus He claims.

Dunskus claims on Twitter that Recon Bolt is less fair than Valorant's default character distribution method.

"Personally, I hope that Riot will replace the current "fastest wins" system with one where no one has an advantage in speed," Dunskus wrote in April.

That is one way to look at it. Someone even created an "Instalock Trainer" app that simulates Valorant's character selection screen.

While Valorant's character selection is not strictly fair, I doubt most players are happy with having to load the app before every game to even the odds. Streamers also complain that Recon Bolt could be used by stream snipers to identify which character the streamer is playing, but Dunskus said this was not an intentional use of the app and that it was patched a while ago

Recon.

Wherever ReconBolt's justification lies, it is ultimately up to Riot to revoke API access at will, in which case it could threaten legal action against any tool it deems objectionable.

Dunskus takes the news calmly. He is surprised by Recon Bolt's success and is "amazed" that he was able to live off Recon Bolt's revenues for as long as he was able. He is now looking for a "real" job as an iOS developer.

Note: This article has been updated with Danskes' comments and app usage.