Riot Suspends Over 150,000 Accounts in Recent Ban Wave
Indeed, the statistics provided by Riot are quite staggering. According to Phillip Koskinas, head of the analytics team at Riot Games, over 150,000 accounts were recently suspended due to cheating.
Phillip Koskinas emphasized that the break from work for Riot employees was almost nonexistent, as many hackers and cheaters have emerged during this period, severely disrupting the gaming experience for the community. Specifically, the 150,000 accounts mentioned were exclusively from the game VALORANT. Through the anti-cheat system Vanguard, Riot typically detects over 5,000 violating accounts each day. Notably, on January 11 and January 13, nearly 12,000 incidents were flagged for suspension.
Majority of Suspended Accounts Due to “Familiar Cheating Methods”?
As seen in the data shared, Phillip Koskinas and the Riot staff have suspended accounts based on six different cheating methods. Among these, the majority of bans were applied for two primary reasons: Cheating and Hardware. These are the two most common types of violations, either directly detected during gameplay or through residual traces of cheating software.
However, while the number of 150,000 is indeed high, it is significantly lower compared to the initial stages of the game’s launch. Previously, Riot representative Jose “the3” Chavez revealed that, in the four years since Vanguard was implemented in VALORANT, around 3.6 million accounts had been suspended—a staggering figure that underscores the seriousness of cheating in this game.
Currently, VALORANT boasts an average of 14 million active players each month. With the number of violating accounts at about 1% (150,000), the game can feel assured in continuing to provide a fair gaming environment without concerns of widespread cheating.
