Nearly 300,000 League of Legends and VALORANT accounts locked for ranked cheating: The Vanguard verdict and the question of data justice

Nearly 300,000 League of Legends and VALORANT accounts locked for ranked cheating: The Vanguard verdict and the question of data justice I have been following Riot Games' matches and ranked systems for years, and the number of 300,000 accounts locked for ranked cheating that was just announced is not what surprises me. What interests me more is the way this story is told: a round number, no error rate, no appeals process, no independent voice verifying it. Results are a lie that time knows by heart; xG is the testimony. In football, I use xG to re-read matches; in esports, Vanguard is creating another kind of "testimony" — enforcement data from the publisher itself. Croatia's PPDA chart in 2026 does not measure pressure, it measures pride. Today, the number 300,000 does not measure cheating, it measures the power of a system that is expanding its punitive scope. The empty stadium in 2026 was a natural experiment: football does not need spectators to reveal its essence. Similarly, the Vanguard era in League of Legends is exposing the essence of an esports platform that is increasingly centralizing power. Context: Vanguard, the kernel-level anti-cheat system originally deployed for VALORANT, was officially integrated into League of Legends in September 2026. This is not a gameplay patch. This is a structural change in how the game client operates on a player's machine. Since then, Vanguard has not only stopped at detecting cheating software — it has expanded to controlling ranked system behavior: boosting, hitchhiking, and smurf accounts. According to official information, nearly 300,000 accounts across both games have been actioned. To understand the significance of this number, we need to look at the larger picture: about 120 million monthly players in League of Legends and about 20 million in VALORANT, approximately 140 million players. The percentage of actioned accounts is only about 0.2% — relatively small compared to the total, but the absolute number is still large enough to generate a wave of community feedback. Vanguard was already deployed in VALORANT, and its integration into League of Legends marks a critical turning point in Riot Games' anti-cheat strategy. This means that the kernel-level security system now covers both of their main games, creating a cross-title governance layer. From the perspective of someone who has followed the development of both traditional esports and football, I see this as a change with significance that goes beyond the scope of a single game. The figure of 300,000 locked accounts is published as an achievement. But in data analysis, we must ask: 300,000 compared to what? Compared to 140 million monthly players, this number is a very small fraction. If Riot Games wants to convey the message that they are effectively controlling the cheating situation, then publishing a large absolute number without chronological comparison, without a recidivism rate, and without a breakdown by game or region is a major transparency deficiency. More important is how Riot Games defines the boundary of cheating behavior. According to the article, Riot clearly distinguishes between "smurfing" (playing secondary accounts at a lower rank than your true skill level) and "boosting" (a high-skilled player logging into another person's account to climb ranks). Riot states that smurfing is not automatically considered cheating. They list eight legitimate use cases for secondary accounts, including protecting the highest achievement on their main account, practicing new champions or agents, and maintaining privacy. This shows a intent-based boundary, not a count-based one. But how can an automated system assess intent? This is a difficult question, and Riot's answer — if any — will determine the fairness of the entire punishment system. One of the most notable findings in the article is the concept of the "hitchhiker" — a player who uses their own account but queues together with an account that is being boosted. Under the new policy, these players may lose ranked points (LP) earned in games involving the boosted account, even if they played legitimately. This is a concerning legal precedent: punishing players who did not violate any software rule, merely because they queued with a violator. Imagine an innocent player — a friend who may not know that the other person is using a boosting service. That player uses their own account, plays honestly, and then loses points because of another person's behavior. This violates the principle of individual responsibility. In football, players are not punished because their teammate uses doping. In traditional sports, the principle of justice requires evidence of individual fault. Riot Games may argue that hitchhikers are "benefiting" from boosting, but revoking points without a clear appeals mechanism is a serious due process gap. Furthermore, the new policy also allows Riot to lock multiple accounts and even suspend the main account for repeat boosting offenders. When combined with the planned rollout of multi-factor authentication (MFA), TPM 2.0 hardware attestation, and requirements that may vary by player rank, the severity of punishment will only increase. TPM 2.0 is a hardware security standard. If Riot implements a mechanism that binds accounts to physical hardware, creating new accounts to evade bans will become much more difficult. However, this also raises a privacy and accessibility issue. Players using public computers at internet cafes (a significant feature in many Asian countries, including Vietnam) will be disadvantaged if their accounts are bound to cafe hardware. Players who buy used computers will face complex verification processes as second-hand hardware carries the identity of previous users. This is not a small issue. In Vietnam, the internet cafe system is an integral part of gaming culture. If Riot applies hardware verification policies without exceptions for internet cafes, millions of players will be affected. I have witnessed this in my own journey from Vietnam to America: back home, many players do not have their own computers; they go to internet cafes to play. A security policy designed in North America could inadvertently eliminate an entire generation of players in Southeast Asia. Another issue to consider is the lack of false positive rate data. Any anti-cheat system can make mistakes. With an enforcement scale of up to 300,000 accounts, even a small error rate (e.g., 0.1%) could affect hundreds of innocent people. The article does not mention an appeals mechanism or any false positive data. This raises the question: Will Riot publish the false positive rate and appeals process? If not, how can players trust the fairness of the system? From a data analysis perspective, I see a notable parallel between how Riot is handling this issue and how some football teams use data to manage players. In football, we use xG (expected goals) to assess chance quality. xG does not judge anyone; it merely exposes the truth that results hide. But xG is an analytical tool, not a punishment tool. When Vanguard uses data to lock accounts, it is playing the role of both a judicial system and an investigative agency. And while xG can be independently verified by multiple parties, Vanguard data is a "black box" that only Riot can explain. The empty stadium in 2026 was a natural experiment: football does not need spectators to reveal its essence. The Vanguard era in League of Legends creates a similar experiment: when an anti-cheat system is expanded from detecting software to controlling behavior, the nature of platform power is exposed. Riot is not just a game publisher; they are becoming a digital government with the ability to bind hardware identity, determine legal and illegal behaviors, and punish without an independent appeals process. This brings me to a core question: Is ranked cheating a problem that can be completely solved by technology? Or is it a matter of demand and supply? On the demand side, there are players who want to achieve high ranks to display status or to meet peer pressure. On the supply side, there are highly skilled players who earn money from boosting because they do not have stable income from the traditional esports career path. When you intensify enforcement, you do not eliminate the market; you only increase the operating costs for service providers. Boosting prices may rise. The black market may move to other games with weaker anti-cheat systems. This is a systemic problem that cannot be solved by a noisy wave of account locks. In an analysis of the football transfer market, I once compared transfer data to the tide: looking at the surface of the water does not tell you anything; you must measure the seabed. Similarly, locking 300,000 accounts does not tell us the true level of cheating. It only tells us how aggressively Riot has acted. The surface is the number 300,000; the seabed is the economic motivation and social structure behind boosting. I want to examine the community reaction more closely. The article does not mention any reaction from the player community, experts, or those affected. This omission unbalanced the article. When writing about a decision involving mass punishment, journalists have a responsibility to include the voices of those who may be affected. The absence of any player reaction makes the article feel like an extended press release rather than an investigation. From a systems analysis perspective, I see a close relationship between ranked quality and talent scouting quality. Academy teams and tier-two teams often use ranked ladder status as a filter to find new talent. If the ladder is corrupted by boosting, those scouting signals will be noisy and lead to wrong decisions. Conversely, if the anti-cheat system works effectively, the ladder will become a more reliable channel for talent development and discovery. However, we need data to assess whether this effect is actually achieved. We need 6–18 months to see a difference in the quality of talent discovered through the ladder. One notable blind spot is regional variation. League of Legends in mainland China is operated by Tencent, with localized anti-cheat and account verification systems distinct from the global Vanguard rollout. Does the 300,000 figure include the Chinese server population? This is an important question. If it does not, then the actual enforcement coverage is much lower than 0.2% calculated against 140 million players, because a large portion of League of Legends monthly actives are in the Chinese ecosystem. The lack of such information is one of the biggest deficiencies in the article's factual accuracy. From a legal and governance perspective, Riot's new policy raises an important question about the role of game publishers. When a private company holds all power — creating the law (terms of service), enforcing the law (Vanguard system), adjudicating (account locks), and benefiting from enforcement (reduced churn, increased player retention) — there is no independent arbitration layer. In traditional sports, there are independent federations and dispute resolution bodies. In esports, Riot is at once legislator, police, and court. In football, stats like xG and PPDA are not punishment tools. They are analytical tools. Football federations do not lock players because their PPDA numbers are low. They use fair judicial processes with third-party oversight. Vanguard, as an anti-cheat system, operates completely differently. It automates the punishment process and does not allow players to examine the evidence. Let me be clear that preventing cheating is a good thing for game integrity. I am not objecting to Riot enforcing its anti-cheat rules. The issue is the lack of transparency, accountability, and the tendency to expand punitive scope to innocent players. PPDA in 2026 taught me: pressing is not about running more, but running at the right time. Similarly, anti-cheat is not about locking as many accounts as possible, but locking the right people, the right behaviors, and having a mechanism to correct mistakes. From my analysis of many seasons of esports and football, a common mistake among organizations is focusing too much on output indicators without considering the process behind them. In football, a coach can be fired just for poor results, even if the team created more xG than the opponent. Conversely, a team can win through luck and be overrated. Similarly, the number of 300,000 locked accounts can create the impression that Riot is effectively managing the situation. But if this figure does not include error rates, timeframe, and specific regions, it is just a marketing number. Football is luck. But in esports, the luck lies in how we interpret enforcement data. One of the aspects I am most interested in is how Riot is expanding Vanguard's scope from detecting software cheats to controlling ranked system behavior. This could create a "parallel universe" — where players are not only monitored technically but also monitored for social behavior. If they queue with strangers, they could be "hitchhikers"; if they create secondary accounts, they could be "smurfs"; if they lose a match suspiciously, they could be suspected of "deranking". This creates an atmosphere of fear and distrust within the community. Players are no longer sure if an innocent action might be misunderstood as cheating. My years of following international football teach me that a punishment system is only sustainable when it is based on principles that are public, predictable, and with a clear appeals mechanism. FIFA and UEFA have faced criticism in the past for opaque punitive measures. Esports, being a much younger field, has the opportunity to learn from those mistakes and build a fairer system. However, if Riot continues to use Vanguard as a "black box" without independent oversight, they risk repeating those mistakes. I have spent years as a data consultant for football teams and analyzing the transfer market. I see a great similarity between the use of data in football and the use of data in esports. In football, clubs often rely on sports advisors to make recruitment and tactical decisions. Data like xG and PPDA are used to evaluate player and team performance. But data only has meaning when we understand the context. A player with low xG but playing for a weak team may still be valuable. A player with high xG but wasting chances may be a risk. Similarly, the number of 300,000 locked accounts has no meaning unless we understand the context. To understand it, we need to know: How many of those accounts are mains, alts, or accounts of people who only violated once? What percentage are intentional cheaters versus innocent "hitchhikers"? Does Riot publish this breakdown? If so, the article would be much more valuable. Furthermore, we need to consider the commercial dimension. Riot Games is a business. Strengthening anti-cheat may increase operating costs, but it also may increase player satisfaction and retention. Players who are affected by boosting and cheating tend to leave the game, reducing revenue from in-game items. Cleaning up the ranked system may be a long-term strategy to protect revenue, not just an act for the community. When a company says it is acting "for the player's benefit", we should examine whether that benefit aligns with their own business interests. In this case, they may coincide, but that does not mean they always coincide. The expansion of Vanguard from VALORANT to League of Legends also raises a question about implementation cost. Kernel-level anti-cheat is highly effective but also highly invasive. It operates at the lowest level of the operating system, with the ability to read and write to any memory region of the computer. Theoretically, it could access sensitive information beyond the game. This has caused privacy concerns when Vanguard was first deployed in VALORANT. Some worried that Riot might collect data outside the game scope. Riot denied this, but because Vanguard is closed source, no one can independently verify it. With Vanguard now present in both major games, Riot's data collection scope expands significantly. A player might play both League of Legends and VALORANT — and both are monitored by the same kernel-level system. Riot could combine data from both games to create a broader behavioral profile. They could know your gaming habits, the times you play, who you frequently queue with. They could detect if you are playing with the same person in both games. This data could serve anti-cheat purposes, but it could also be used for other purposes — for example, marketing. In data analysis, we have an important principle: correlation does not imply causation. A player queuing with a booster does not necessarily mean they know or agree with the boosting. But Riot's system may not distinguish the difference, leading to wrongful punishment. This is a problem that any automated system must face. The error rate may be low, but at the scale of hundreds of thousands of accounts, even a small error rate can affect many people. I want to stress that I am not against using anti-cheat technology — I am an advocate for system integrity, including a player's right to appeal. I also want to address the impact of this policy on esports stars. Many professional players use secondary accounts for practice and to play ranked without pressure. Although Riot says that using alt accounts for legitimate purposes is allowed, there is a gray area. If a pro player accidentally queues with a friend — who is being boosted — that pro could lose points. This could create trouble for clubs and leagues. Clubs may have to establish internal rules on this issue; no unified rule exists across the entire system yet. I want to share a personal experience. When I first started my data analysis career, I wrote an article about a football team that created many chances but could not score. I used xG to demonstrate that the team was unlucky rather than bad. The article sparked a huge debate, with many people saying I was making excuses for that team. But the data proved otherwise. Similarly, when we look at the number of 300,000 locked accounts, we should not rush to conclude that Riot is right or wrong. We need more data and context to make an accurate assessment. xG does not judge anyone; it merely exposes the truth that results hide. Likewise, enforcement data must be examined with caution. I have been a data analyst for a long time, and I can say that statistical figures only have meaning when we understand their origin and context. The number of 300,000 locked accounts does not tell us the number of actual cheaters. It is possible that one player creates many accounts to boost for many different people, and when all those accounts are locked, the 300,000 figure includes multiple accounts belonging to the same person. This diminishes the meaning of the figure in terms of the actual number of affected players. The lack of region-specific data is also a problem. Does the 300,000 figure include accounts from Vietnam, the US, Brazil, South Korea, or mainly one region? If there are differences in enforcement between regions, it could create "two-tier justice" — players in strongly enforced regions experience things differently from those in weakly enforced regions. In football, we have seen similar issues when wealthy countries can afford legal teams to avoid FIFA sanctions. Another perspective I want to bring is about player psychology. The ranked system is a powerful tool in creating engagement and a sense of achievement for players. When the ranked system is threatened by cheating, players feel insulted and lose trust. When Riot locks 300,000 accounts, they send a powerful signal: the ranked system is serious and fair. This could help reinforce the confidence of legitimate players. But if there are too many wrongful cases — innocent players being locked — that confidence will quickly be eroded. In football, VAR (Video Assistant Referee) was introduced to reduce mistakes, but it created a new set of controversies. VAR slows down the game, creates debated offside decisions, and disrupts the flow. Similarly, Vanguard may be creating a new set of problems. Previously, a player could suspect someone was boosted but had no way to confirm. Now, Vanguard will handle it secretly, and players will not know whether anyone has been punished. This could lead to more suspicion. I also want to emphasize that in the esports industry, just like in football, data is a valuable resource that needs protection. Riot's use of Vanguard data to improve its anti-cheat system is a good thing. But that data could also be used for other purposes. If Riot decides to sell data or share it with third parties, that would create a serious privacy problem. I believe Riot has a responsibility to clearly explain how they use data and for what purposes. For sports analysts like me, data transparency is crucial. We cannot provide accurate recommendations if we do not have the full data. Riot publishing the 300,000 figure without supporting details prevents us from evaluating the effectiveness of the anti-cheat system. We need to know: what was the past cheating rate, what is the current rate, what is the wrongful lock rate, and what measures are being taken to improve the system. In a recent analysis of transfer market valuations, I pointed out that quantitative metrics (like xG) only reflect part of a player's performance. Other factors such as leadership, health, and contribution to the team's style also matter equally. Similarly, the number 300,000 only reflects part of the cheating situation within the game. There may be many more cheaters that are not detected. There may be players who were wrongly detected. We cannot confidently assert the system's effectiveness based on this number alone. I believe Riot Games needs to adopt a more transparent approach in communicating its anti-cheat measures. They should publish periodic reports on the cheating situation, error rates, and the number of locked accounts by region. If they worry that too much information can be exploited by cheaters, they can release information in a condensed form, such as a periodic statistics table. This will build trust from the community and help the esports industry grow more healthily. I have observed many governance systems in traditional sports: FIFA, UEFA, NBA, NFL. One of the biggest lessons is that transparency is the foundation of trust. When a league or organization makes punitive decisions, they must publicly disclose their reasons and evidence. If not, a wave of opposition will quickly follow. Esports, though younger, should not go down that path. Riot Games is one of the largest and most influential publishers in the industry, and they have an opportunity to set a new standard. Looking back at the original article, I notice that the author made several important observations. The author emphasized that the expansion of Vanguard to League of Legends is a major step in protecting the integrity of the ranked system. However, the author also raised the question of distinguishing legal smurfing from boosting. The author provided a list of legitimate cases for using secondary accounts. This shows that Riot is trying to build a more complex rule system rather than a simple one, and this could create legal loopholes and opportunities for dispute. Another notable point the author clarified is the concept of the "hitchhiker". The author explains that a "hitchhiker" is a player who uses their own account but queues with a boosted account, and they may lose points earned in those matches. This is extremely important because it shows that Riot is extending legal liability from direct violators to related parties. This could create a sense of insecurity in the community, as players may be inadvertently affected without even knowing it. I have analyzed many datasets in my career. One thing I have learned is that there is never a magic number that explains the entire story. The number of 300,000 locked accounts is only part of a larger picture. That picture includes the economic drivers of boosting, the complexity of defining cheating behavior, and the challenges of building a fair governance system. Until the full picture is exposed, we should be cautious and avoid jumping to conclusions. Results are a lie that time knows by heart; xG is the testimony. I believe we should apply the same principle to Riot's enforcement data. Finally, the biggest issue is not just about the number 300,000 or the wave of account locks. The biggest issue is the future of platform governance in esports. When a company holds absolute power not only over running the game but also over defining what behavior is legal, punishing that behavior, and collecting data on all players, the need for checks and balances becomes crucial. I hope that Riot will continue to update and improve its system to ensure fairness and transparency. The honest players who just want a healthy competitive environment deserve such a system. This is a long story, and I will continue to follow its development closely. But I believe that, just like in football, data will be our guide. I will use every analytical tool I have to assess the situation as objectively as possible.