Riot Games‘ kernel-level anti-cheat, Vanguard, has received an update that is allegedly altering system firmware to remove the ability of the user to access certain hardware associated with cheating.
Riot Games quoted one post discussing the anti-cheat, replying “congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight.” But how exactly does Vanguard’s new system make “paperweights” out of hardware?
Shouldn’t that be insanely illegal? This is literally malware. Even if someone is outright hacking into your servers, you can’t just hack back and ruin their system. There’s a reason the legal side is not supposed to resort to illegal actions, the fuck.
While I agree with you this should be illegal, on the other side they have my sympathy. Also I think cheating in online games ruining others fun and the company should be illegal too. I mean why is that not illegal still is beyond me. It’s not even illegal for companies developing and selling this shit. But to comeback to your point about the illegality to brick hardware through a videogame, I agree with you.
I dunno’, that’s kinda exactly what “scammer payback” does. Though that’s slightly different than them ‘just’ hacking you.
Still agreed that doing it over a video game is just crazy.