There have been reports in recent days that VALORANT, which is Riot Games' fantasy-based Counter-Strike clone, has caused people to lag because of its anti-cheat system.
The reason for this is simple: because Riot uses a pervasive anti-cheat system that goes above and beyond the call of duty in order to squash cheating in their ultra-competitive game. A thread started by Reddit user Dolphin Whacker noted that VALORANT's anti-cheat driver vgk.sys starts when the users' computer is turned on, which is quite different from other anti-cheat systems such as BattlEye and EasyAntiCheat, which both "... load when you're opening the game, and unload when you've closed it. If you'd like to see if for yourself, open cmd and type "sc query vgk".
The user ended the post asking if it was intentional, and RiotArkem responded, saying that it was and that it doesn't scan anything, with the driver designed to take up "... as few system resources as possible and it doesn't communicate as possible." RiotArkem also stated that users could remove it at any time.
VALORANT players will probably want to remove it, because it seems as though it takes up a lot of system resources. Reddit user redredbeard recorded himself playing World of Warcraft and stuttering at regular intervals. When he uninstalled VALORANT, the stuttering immediately stopped. Other users noted that they were having FPS drops as well, and RiotArkem wanted redredbeard to start up a support ticket in an effort to try and get the ball officially rolling on solving this important issue.
How To Deal With Valorant's Anti-Cheat Causing Lag
If you're having trouble with FPS drops outside of VALORANT, your best bet is to either uninstall or rename the Valorant anti-cheat when outside of the game. Do note that if you uninstall it, that your computer will need to restart each time to reinstall the driver. Here are the steps you can take:
- Open Add/Remove Programs
- Find Riot Vanguard on the list
- Uninstall Riot Vanguard
The other method proposed by a user is renaming the file
- Open Windows Explorer to Riot Vanguard (typically under Program files)
- Find vgk.sys
- Rename vgk.sys to anything else
- Restart computer
- When you want to play Valorant again, you will have to rename the file back and restart the computer
You can also create shortcuts to do things like uninstalling it automatically with powershells or auto-hot key if you wish to automate the process.
Quick Take
Anti-cheat has always been hit or miss for me. Usually a miss, but I suppose anti-cheat is something you don't notice if done correctly, and that it's only noticed when something goes wrong. This is a big something, though, and this needs to be fixed as soon as possible. Whatever the excuse, there is no reason to have anti-cheat running before the game launches if it's going to take up a ton of resources. Either fix it or have it run like every other anti-cheat, Riot.
What do you think of this news? Do you play VALORANT? Have you noticed any FPS issues? Let us know in the comments!
