Riot Games offers up to $100,000 for Vanguard Bug Bounty

Over the past few weeks since the launch of the VALORANT closed beta, there has been a massive amount of talk in the community about the security of Riot Games’ anti-cheat system “Riot Vanguard”. Vanguard is an anti-cheat that has a built in kernel-mode driver that ensures protection from hacks at the deepest levels in-game for a player. Players have brought up concerns about the security of their personal information due to the fact that Vanguard seems to always run in the background. Riot Games released an address on April 17, 2020 about the way their anti-cheat system works to put the community's minds at ease.

In the address Chris Hymes (Data protection officer & Chief Information Security officer) and his team give a detailed address about how Vanguard works, and what the anti-cheat is actually doing in the background while your PC runs. Hymes goes on to say that “we wanted to give you some added insight into how Vanguard was built with security and privacy at heart”. He then lists the core values of the security division of Riot to show players that the developer team is truly player focused. The security team wanted their approach to be clear as they see themselves as:

The guardian of Riot’s player-focused culture Feedback-driven and audience-focused Centered around providing options, not roadblocks

The address then gives the message that “[they] would never let Riot ship anything if [they] weren’t confident it treated player privacy and security with the extreme seriousness they deserve.” This is received well by the community as it lets players know that Riot is truly thinking about them. The team then goes on to explain the philosophy and architecture of Vanguard, you can read those in detail by clicking here.

What was surprising though, was that at the end of the address the team let everyone know about the Bug Bounty Program that they have been commissioning for the last six years through HackerOne, and how they would be opening it up to the VALORANT community. “We’ve rewarded security researchers with almost two million dollars in bounties and our scope includes everything that players interact with.” What this means is that Riot Games has made sure that their anti-cheat system takes security into the highest of accountability. They then go on to say that “[they] want players to continue to play our games with peace of mind,” and will provide potential compensation to players for finding issues with Vanguard. That compensation being a maximum of $100,000 for those in the community that finds major issues with the anti-cheat, or finds a crack in the system that Riot Games can fix. This is one of the biggest bounties ever offered to any gaming community by a major Developer. To find out more about how you can help the developers as well as the community, check out the full details here.

This is a breath of fresh air when compared to most companies. Riot Games seems to be thinking of everything to make sure their players are not only protected from hackers, but also have the utmost security when playing their games. They ask their players to “please keep holding us accountable for protecting both the competitive integrity of your games and your personal privacy.” The benefits are unlimited at this point, especially now that Riot has offered up to $100,000! Want to read the whole address? Click here!