LoL is having a big problem right now, and it's supposedly destroying players' gaming PCs

Riot has released update 14.9 for League of Legends. But this may cause big problems for many players. Riot itself explains that it can't be the fault of the game or the anti-cheat system.

What's happening in LoL now? After the release of patch 14.9 of “League of Legends”, parts of the community complained loudly about Riot and MOBA: players accused the anti-cheat program “Vanguard” of destroying players' computers or deleting important operating system data.

However, Riot developers said they have not yet confirmed any cases where Vanguard hardware has been damaged, which is surprising since reports of PCs stopping working have been increasing on Reddit and Twitter.

Players are complaining about Vanguard's anti-cheat software on social media

What do players say? Colleagues Computer gamesN Quote from several players who have reported their problems:

• One person explains that his laptop no longer turns on and is no longer drawing power from the charger.
• Another explains that he first had to remove the CMOS battery and reset the battery so he could get into the BIOS and repair the computer running Vanguard.

Others suspect that the number of unreported cases is much higher than the number of cases Riot currently uses to defend its own software. Many people solve the problems themselves and therefore never report them. Of course these numbers will not be included:

It's hard to believe the numbers are so low. I personally had problems, but I fixed them myself and never reported them. I strongly suspect that most problems go unreported.

(via reddit.com)

Another affected person adds that all the problems already exist with Valorant. For many people, some devices stopped working with Vanguard at all because they interfered with too many legitimate drivers, causing the game or PC to crash (via reddit.com):

There were a lot of legitimate issues with Vanguard when Valorant launched. Official communication channels were quick to impose censorship and shut down discussion on this topic.

Riot says: No hardware crashes have been confirmed yet

What does Riot say about this? LoL operators have now spoken up and responded to players' issues. Riot explained (trans dotesports.com):

• Most initial problems are related to “common error codes” or driver errors, rather than anything malicious.
• Notably, the developers stated that they “have not yet confirmed any cases of Vanguard hardware damage.”
• Riot added that some “confusing” BIOS issues did appear, but they were mostly related to the UEFI mode toggle and SecureBoot settings.
• “Overall, the rollout has gone well and we are already seeing Vanguard working as intended. We have already seen a sharp decline in bot accounts in the usual places and will continue to monitor that,” said Matthew “K3o” Paoletti, Riot’s anti-cheat manager. .

Are the complaints new? No, not really. Once Riot implemented its anti-cheat program in Valorant, there were many complaints on social media from players saying that their PCs would no longer work.

This is also where Riot responded at the time that it wasn't the game's fault or Vanguard's fault (via pcgamer.com). Instead, it has been pointed out that other competitive games also use anti-cheat software that interferes deeply with the system. For example Call of Duty, Overwatch or Apex Legends.

Controversial anti-cheat tool Vanguard has also taken on streamers and other personalities. One of them was in a game of Swiftplay with other players when he was banned. The strange thing is that the ban happened in the middle of Riot's headquarters:

Valorant: Scary hits on anti-cheat tool, results in in-play streamer ban at Riot HQ