Fortnite Keeps Cheaters at Bay Unlike Valorant and Call Of Duty

The gaming industry has always been plagued by cheaters/hackers. Be it casual, competitive, or even professional, hackers have ruined our favorite games time and again. The question is, how do you keep them at bay? If you think the answer is simply employing an anti-cheat software, you are partially correct. It does help in keeping small-time hackers away but this does not necessarily mean the game is completely free of them. With such an influx of dishonest players, games like Call of Duty Warzone and Valorant have suffered. Fortnite, however, has managed to limit its volume of hackers.

How does anti-cheat software work?

There are two basic types of anti-cheat software; Client-Side anti-cheat and Server-Side anti-cheat. In the client-side, the program has to be installed on the player’s PC. This software will then constantly scan your game in the background as you play it. The game will look for anything malicious that can tweak the game?s code to enable hacks. This is highly effective since most hacks require a certain code in the game?s client process. But this software becomes rather ineffective if the player is using a private/paid hack. It is difficult to detect such ?tailor-made? hacks.

On the other hand, the server-side software is not on your system; it is employed on the servers you are playing on. It collects game data, which may vary from K/D ratios, accuracy, etc. and compare it to a global pool of data to employ bans on players. This is not usually fool-proof since it could go wrong if a naturally skilled player is falsely flagged.

Now that you know how these software work, let?s take a look at what Valorant and Call Of Duty do to counter hackers.

Riot Vanguard: Valorant

Vanguard is the anti-cheat software used by Riot Games, for Valorant. This software is required to be running at all times and starts when Windows boots up. This basically makes it a kernel-based software that runs with your system’s core processes. You can understand it better here.

You may think that if this software has access to your core system, it may be invasive and you are correct (partly). Riot has cleared it up saying it does not give them any surveillance capability over, and above, anything that they already have. Also, other anti-cheat software like ?EasyAntiCheat? and ?BattleEye? use this already, so it is not exactly new.

The difference is, there have been reports of this not allowing people to run certain programs. A Reddit user said that Vanguard was messing with programs it shouldn?t have access to. But this problem has now been fixed as claimed by Riot. Also, Vanguard was never directly responsible for overheating GPUs, but it disabled certain programs that would let you control your fan speed, etc.

Is Vanguard doing enough for Valorant?

Sadly, no. The anti-cheat may look good on paper, and Riot?s vision for it seems more than ideal, but it is still very effective. Sure Riot has a very strict ban-system but this still does not mean it is very effective. Hackers had found their way into the closed beta too and have been using hacks after the full launch. As much as the devs claim the system is very effective, they still have a long way to go if they are to get rid of cheaters for good.

Call Of Duty Warzone

Infinity Ward and Activision seem to be the furthest behind when it comes to keeping your game free of hackers. They issued around 70,000 bans at one point, but to no avail. Surprisingly, there is no known anti-cheat system in place. The devs look into it themselves and look for hackers. The game has over 50 million players, which only makes it harder to track, identify, and ban hackers.

They have been doing this since April but it looks like they just can?t contain the situation. Popular streamer CouRage even called out the game for being overrun with hackers.

There were also reports of Activision issuing bans to accounts that were reportedly not hackers. In a remedial move, they quietly removed them too. You can read about it here.

The tweet by CouRage seems rather fair considering Activision?s ?zero tolerance for cheaters? has borne no fruit. The point to be noted here is that Fortnite has actually been rather successful in keeping its game free of hackers.

The Fortnite way of dealing with hackers

In May 2020, Epic Games announced that Fortnite had nearly 350 million players. Since its launch in 2017, the BR game has performed brilliantly, managing to keep the fans excited. But there is one big reason that this has been possible and it is because of the amazing anti-cheat system of Fortnite. The game employs two different, kernel-based, anti-cheat systems, namely EasyAnticheat and BattleEye.

The game is not absolutely free of cheaters. There have been numerous instances where bans have been issued for the use of aimbots and other hacks, especially on PC.? But, the game has a substantially lower number of cheaters compared to any other Battle Royale/multiplayer game. It may be because of the effectiveness of its anti-cheat systems or it may be because of the fact that there are two systems in place, which makes it difficult for hackers to get through. Clearly, the dual anti-cheat system has worked for Fortnite and it is time others tried it too.

Call of Duty Warzone and Valorant are both fairly new games but have gained a lot of popularity since. Riot Games and Infinity Ward cannot let hackers ruin the game for its honest players. As for Warzone, The game definitely needs a serious upgrade in terms of correctly recognizing cheaters and banning them. Hopefully, the companies will take action soon.