The Valorant anti-cheat lead, Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain, has taken to the game’s website to discuss the importance of players reporting suspicious activities in-game. He even went so far as to call player reporting ”one of the most powerful tools in the fight against cheaters.” Riot Games separately developed an automated system to detect and ban cheaters called Vanguard. However, player reports add human insight and give the Valorant team a sense of how players are feeling about the fairness of the game.
Chamberlain went on to highlight numerous ways that Valorant player reports help the continuous battle against cheaters. For example, if a player receives a lot of reports, Vanguard places them under higher scrutiny. So, your reports help the automated system lock-on to suspicious players. Vanguard also uses reports to support its findings and ban players faster, without the need for manual review.
Reporting cheaters in Valorant is very simple.
How player reports help catch cheaters
Speaking of the manual review process, it relies on Valorant player reports to find suspicious players. The most-reported players are usually placed under the microscope and then banned if found to be cheating. Uncovering cheaters in this way helps the anti-cheat team improve Vanguard’s automated cheat detection. Another benefit of manual reviews, is that it allows Riot to remove the most disruptive players immediately instead of waiting for a ban-wave.
Reports don’t just help hunt down and ban cheaters. The Valorant team also uses them to measure the healthiness of the game and the effectiveness of Vanguard. If the number of reports go up, the team knows players are unhappy about the integrity of the game. As for Vanguard, Riot knows it’s working effectively when reported players are also picked up by the cheat detection system.
Chamberlain also revealed some interesting stats about Valorant player reports and bans. 97% of players have never received a single report. Digging further into that, only 0.3% of players have received more than three reports. Interestingly enough, only 53% of cheaters who have been banned were reported by players. Chamberlain wrapped up his post by asking players to report more to help the anti-cheat team in its fight against cheaters.
