I stopped playing Valorant a while back, but Riot's Vanguard anti-cheat has been running at boot ever since, whether I play or not. That is finally changing. Riot Games has announced Vanguard On-Demand, an update that stops the Vanguard driver from loading at Windows startup. With Vanguard On-Demand, the anti-cheat runs only when you launch a Riot title like Valorant or League of Legends. Once you close the game, Vanguard shuts down automatically. But there is a catch.
The catch is a security checklist Riot calls Vanguard Pre-Check. To switch to on-demand mode, your PC needs to be running at least Windows 11 25H2 with Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, Virtualization-Based Security, Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity, and IOMMU all enabled.
What makes On-Demand possible is the work Riot did with Microsoft's Xbox OS Security Team on a Windows feature called Runtime Driver Attestation Report, which keeps a record of every driver loaded since startup. From there, Vanguard can check at launch whether anything suspicious was loaded while it was inactive.
Riot anti-cheat lead Phillip Koskinas said around 35% of players already meet all the requirements out of the box. Those players will see a toggle appear with their next update. The remaining 65% will need to manually enable the required settings, most of which are BIOS options. Around 3% are on hardware too old to qualify at all.
Koskinas was clear that Riot is not forcing anyone to change anything, and players who do nothing will have Vanguard continue to run exactly as it does today. On-Demand mode does not change whether you can play Valorant or League of Legends, no matter if you qualify or not.
Story Q&A
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From TweakTown's coverage of this story.
How do I check if my PC already meets Vanguard Pre-Check requirements so the On-Demand toggle appears automatically?
Which specific BIOS settings do I need to enable to satisfy the Vanguard Pre-Check (beyond Secure Boot and TPM 2.0)?
What steps should I take if enabling VBS/HVCI causes an FPS drop or breaks older device drivers after switching to On-Demand?
If my hardware is too old to qualify (the ~3% mentioned), will I still be able to launch Riot games with Vanguard running as before?
Want something else? Ask TweakBot.
The always-on behavior has been one of the biggest frustrations with Vanguard since it launched alongside Valorant in 2020. That said, players switching to the On-Demand mode should be aware that VBS and HVCI, two required Windows security features, run parts of the system kernel in a hardware-protected area, and enabling them can cause a small drop in FPS. VBS also activates Microsoft's vulnerable driver blocklist, which may cause older device drivers to stop working.
