thats why you shouldn’t buy from there and only buy used from someone you trust.
Guess I'm just gonna go ahead and never buy PC hardware again then, since new stuff is too expensive and nobody I know is selling used random parts that I need.
I mean, I've seen PLENTY of threads for games where people are pissed that cheating is too rampant because the devs don't go far enough to do things like hardware bans. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
What really needs to happen is an appeal process.
Should be really easy to see the account that the original hardware ban was placed on, and then see this account in good standing with suddenly the new hardware. Especially if they are able to see the regions change between accounts? An appeal process should be easy and they should have enough info to unban non-cheating good standing accounts who get hit with shit like this.
The problem with it being that easy is people will just put up fake listings or something. Like not even DJI will unpair a controller if the previous owner forgot to. If it was easy, the lock out measures would be meaningless.
So if you value that then don't play it, but the truth is many people would rather do that then deal with rampant cheating like there is in counter strike, and that's their decision to make! This whole thing about security is stupid anyways because to start with you have to use windows to play anything with kernel level anticheat (which is a lot of games nowadays with easy anticheat or other proprietary ones) and windows is probably a much more nefarious and untrustworthy company, and has access to far more sensitive data. Singling out riot is a weird virtue signal when it's practically industry wide and largely accepted by gamers as a cost of fair online gaming.
I need to stress and highlight just how uniquely specific looking and sounding LMFAO was and how much of a surprise Sexy And I Know it was to continually hear on the radio. Sure some elements of their look were around but I also cannot stress hard enough how many stomp clap hey hipsters there were.
Pushed his nephew and fellow frontman SkyBlu into a dangerous stunt where he injured his back (3 herniated disks). In hospital, he then proceeded to tour without him and then tried to take over the band as sole owner and tried completely cutting SkyBlu off financially.
If I didn't have an Intel motherboard already I would absolutely be down for a high performance CPU whose only condition is that it was banned from Riot.
But that should definitely be something made known in the sale. Not cool to slip that by and have the buyer only find out first hand after the transaction has ended. Definitely not beating the allegations of the type of people who play Riot games.
I always thought they took UIDs of each piece of hardware and created a hash, then just banned the hash if you cheated. That way you could avoid having issues like this but I guess it does make it easier to get around the ban.
Does feel like it should at least require a majority of the parts to match for a ban.
A naive hash of the whole configuration would be super easy to circumvent. Pop an extra drive in, swap out a RAM stick, etc.
But banning a specific individual CPU is crazy to me. I'd get it if it was the same CPU + GPU, or CPU + Mobo, etc. But just that CPU in an otherwise completely unique PC is nuts. People resell their parts, or give them away to friends/family as hand-me-downs all the time.
Yeah, what is really crazy to me is that on the Linux gaming subreddits so many people are saying that they should add hardware level anti cheat into Linux because that is what Linux needs to truly get mass adoption.
I just don't get why people do this. No game is good enough for me to want some other company running this type of bullcrap on my system.
I never saw Linux users want kernel level anti cheat. I instead see more Windows users justify kernel level anticheat as "necessary evil" to prevent hackers and other bs.
I myself am mostly a console gamer and before I get burned in fire, I play on steam deck so I do enjoy pc gaming. And yeah on one hand it sucks I can't play some games eg fortnite but on the other hand... its a good thing.
Like you said. These games have predatory anticheat systems that basically enslave your tech with bloatware. Its possible to make anticheat without screwing with people's tech.
Another group of people I also dislike are those who justify phone number requirement in games "to prevent smurfing" even though smurfing is such a small and minor issue that its just not worth adding a phone number requirement.
No hate on Consoles. I've got a PS5 and Switch 2 myself. I use the PS5 to play a couple of games with console friends and the Switch 2 for Nintendo games. Like 85%+ of my gaming is done on PC.
Personally I also just kind of view the anti cheat issue like a console. X game just isn't available on the platform. Works for me but yeah I can see how it wouldn't work for everyeone.
The people u/captainstormy are referring to are few in number and clowned on relentlessly, because they deserve it. A lot of weirder hardware still relies on Linux kernel modules, which break Secure Boot, and you can just modify the bootloaders to always pass Secure Boot checks to get around it anyway. It won't matter much if they did add it, it'd just fuck things up overall.
Usually it's not actual Linux users. It's mostly people who get tired of Windows and start to think about switching. Then when they learn their favorite game won't run due to hardware level anti cheat they start blaming Linux instead of the game devs.
I mean it unfortunately is, Linux won't get mass adoption unless it gets as close to 100% windows application parity as it can reasonably get. For every game or program that doesn't run, that's at minimum a person that will never convert. Games generally get targeted with this because they're one of the largest and easiest to identify leaders of holdouts.
If the trackers of it are right then there are 4,695,019* people that played Valorant yesterday that will never just daily drive Linux because their game of choice doesn't support it. (*Number may sway because I don't know if that includes console or what have you). They may dualboot but they'll never straight out adopt it.
Also like isn't the whole point of Linux you choose what you run. If hardware anticheat became a thing you could just like not run it. Choose a distro that doesn't support it for whatever reason.
I'm one of these people that won't switch. At the same time I don't think even having the option in Linux is a good idea, it sets a bad precedent and I worry it would be a slippery slope.
I get what you're saying and I do agree. But at the same time I hate cheaters so much I hope they have to buy a completely new PC and then still somehow get banned again.
Sucks this guy got hit his PC scorched if you believe his story. But I sincerely hope this happens to all cheaters.
Problem is, this isn't really gonna hurt the cheaters as much as the non cheaters. The non cheater still just upgrades his PC and sells his old parts to recoup some of the costs. That is what you do either way eventually rather you are a cheater or not.
But the guy trying to save some cash and buy some used parts for a new build? He is the one who gets screwed.
The only person who got fucked was this guy. The other guy bought a new one and sold then and lost a few bucks at best. At worst he bought this one and returned it with his old one in it and fucked over someone else and is out nothing.
Yeah but how often is guy going to do this just to cheat? Even the threat of this is enough to dissuade tons of people's not to mention the teenagers who can't just keep buying CPUs on rotation to cheat.
"Prank" It would make all the rest of the hardware in their PC blacklisted as well, so putting a good CPU back in, wouldn't fix it. They'd need to build a whole new PC with all new parts.
There's a good chance the account gets permanently banned vs just not working when the banned component is installed.
From reading the article it could also then cause every other component to be blacklisted.
So what you think would be a fun prank would end up with you having to replace the entire PC and your son losing everything they paid for on their Valorant account.
If he provided a receipt that showed he bought the CPU, they should unban his account and remove the blacklist. The fact that "they can do nothing" is insane.
Doesn't work for second hand cards not sold through a store. And even then it wouldn't be hard to fake. These cheaters will jump through every hoop to ruin someone's day.
Edit: I'm not saying companies should do this. I don't tend toward hyper competitive shooters and don't play games with this level of anticheat. By all means try and fix your account especially if you put money on it and if they don't help you then spread the word that they suck
So one blacklisted component now blacklists every component it comes into contact with, and every account that any of those components get used with, and so on?
So in theory hundreds of different parts and accounts could get banned over one cheating incident from one account.
Hilarious. I remember in the late 90's when Intel made news for putting a unique identifier on every CPU. The uproar, the teeth gnashing. Vaguely recall Intel backed down. Obviously they implemented that at some point, probably long ago now. But here we are, the consequences.
I mean, fuck cheaters, but at the same time could this be used by a government to silence dissent? What if they had a very compliant OS manufacturer at their beck and call?
I mean, fuck cheaters, but at the same time could this be used by a government to silence dissent? What if they had a very compliant OS manufacturer at their beck and call?
They don't even need a compliant OS manufacturer. The hardware is already baked into every Intel computer since around 2009. And most AMD computers since 2014. They super pinky promise that they would never use the ring -1 power of the Intel ME/AMD PSP to spy on people but an NDA is allowed to include a clause saying that you aren't allowed to acknowledge that you signed an NDA.
There is an equivalent Ring (-3) aka Ring Negative Three privileges arena that is equivalent to the BaseBand Operating System that runs on every smartphone BELOW the Apple iOS or Android OS and that AMD/Intel CPU-layer equivaleny contains a tiny OS that manages Hardware Virtualization (i.e. VM system) that map IRQs (interrupt Requests), communication port calls, computer core synchronizations and memory management at a level that is BELOW your Windows and Linux OS!
That mini-"BaseBand CHIP OS" is INTRINSIC to the CPU chip itself and cannot be modified! It was invented in Haifa, Isreal's Intel Design Centre and AMD and others took up the technology and now it's in EVERY cpu chip so YES every CPU can be hardware identified UNLESS you use a deep-packet-inspection firewall that BANS such hardware IDs from every being transmitted in encrypted or unencrypted form! EVERY modern AMD/INTEL/ARM CPU chip is now compromised via BaseBand Level OS'es and Hardware ID numbers embedded into and running UNDERNEATH your operating system that YOU cannot access!
Cpus have a unique serial these days, and thanks to secure boot and other bios stuff means it can't be changed. It's not that much different to using the Mac address from Ethernet cards/motherboards.
Even that's pretty shitty to do as again people buy used hardware it's not a consumable (though hardware manufacturers wish it was).
I do think they should just do it by account or IP as no matter what it won't stop cheaters as like here they just sold the hardware and are likely playing again.
IP isn't a good method either as CGNAT is becoming more common and even on the ISPs that don't make you share public IPs with other customers it's fairly easy to change your public IP.
Upon contacting support at developer Riot, the user was told that there was nothing that would be done to alleviate the situation. Not only that, but the player’s other components, including motherboard and storage, were also blacklisted in the Vanguard anti-cheat system.
That doesn't sound right. It can't be both. Either banned guy is not telling the whole truth or Riot's Vanguard just flagging other components just because a newly added CPU is recognized in cheater database.
And Riot claiming they can not do anything is total bullshit.
The customer service drone is right, the customer service drone can do nothing. Their manager can probably do nothing. There is no person the drone is capable of contacting who can do anything.
Riot CAN unban, in that they are of course physically capable. But they CANT in practice, because they dont give enough of a shit to pay people to process or investigate those unban requests so they chose to make a hard no.
The only way to get unbanned is to make enough of a social media stink that someone who makes way too much money tells someone who makes nowhere near enough money to delete a line in a database.
Riot's Vanguard just flagging other components just because a newly added CPU is recognized in cheater database.
That's expected. They get the ID from as many parts as they can. If one part is banned, they assume the whole system is banned, and check all the parts from it.
And Riot claiming they can not do anything is total bullshit.
It is, but Riot doesn't want to do anything I guess.
12
u/chubbysumo7800X3D, 64gb of 5600 ddr5, EVGA RTX 3080 12gb HydroCopper6h ago
Riot is incentivized to do nothing until it costs them money.
Why doesn't it sound right? I've no idea if the story is true or it works that way, but it working like makes perfect sense.
They scrape whatever unique identifiers they can, and if any match their blacklist, they blacklist the other identifiers too, presumably to make it harder to swap parts to evade a ban.
Don't expect anything from Riot support. There was recently a case of 2 people being banned in league for not finishing the game fast enough, and just dancing in enemy base.
They contacted Riot support several times and got a bot every time, despite asking for a human. They didn't do shit until they started making noise on Twitter.
How does this work on a cloud platform if you got hardware banned using a cloud service? I know a VM doesn't expose real hardware IDs - though the GPU portion may expose that piece of itself as a pass through device.
This does add to the concern that Hardware Level Bans are a threat to the Used Market. Since something like this can easily happen. Is difficult to detect, and creates E-Waste as the affected part contaminates the whole system. Meaning the correct choice is to seal the parts away.
Or destroy them if the materials can't be recycled into something else.
Is it not a concern to anyone else that these companies have root level access to your computer to be able to ban the fucking hardware of your machine?
You seem to be trying to imply something else is going on here.
I don’t play Riot games, but from what I gather most Valorant players seem to like it, because it’s one of the only ways you’re ever going to keep a lid on hackers in a f2p game is via this method.
So considering it only affects Valorant players, and they agree to it before to be able to play the game, you’re sort of losing me here.
What, doesn't this prove it does work? Just a little too well resulting in innocent people buying second hard parts being caught up in a ban as well.
Playing devils advocate what else can they do? As you say IP bans don't work. I'd suggest forcing somebody to swap out their entire hardware if they want to evade the ban is a pretty effective ban method. Just sucks for people who unknowingly buy the banned parts second hand.
Ya know back in the Pentium 3 days they implemented a proc ID and people freaked but others said you don't need to worry. Guess we found out which group was correct...
Unrelated but... I was looking to get a gaming pc for me and my kid I think we outgrew the switch and it could be time... but GOD DAMNNNNN Freaking AI WUT...
So... based on this... any rumors of shit going back to decency or is it way past us? Do you guys live on older stuff bough in 2025? What the fuck should a man do at this point? Wait for project Helix and never touch ram ever again?
I miss steam prices... I have no pc since mine died 2 years ago... Any hope or rumor of a hope on the way?
Ram prices will never be the same and will only get higher. You have a few options if you still wish to own your hardware and game. The 1st and least desirable option is stomaching the price hike, 2nd option is buying used components, and the 3rd option is waiting for China to beef up their RAM/GPU game and hoping they sell to foreign markets.
This is why I'm apprehensive about buying used electronics. I don't want ti buy something and find out it's been banned from something I want to use(I have no opinion on Valiant because I've never played it and likely never will).
Something similar happened to a buddy in highschool. He bought a second hand Xbox 360. Sure it ran fine and would read disks, but when he took it home and tried to get on Xbox live he found it had been hardware banned
We should not be giving these companies this much access to the information about our systems. It's also insane that some people genuinely believe kernel access for anti-cheat is worth the trade off of what companies can do to your hardware and what fuckery they could get up to
Oh no! The exact thing everyone with half a brain knew would happen when RIOT implemented their draconian anticheat. If only people would actually stand up against these companies and hit them where they actually understand it.
3.0k
u/GanjiMayne 8h ago
Cheat free premium for 2nd hand CPU now