A Riot ban followed a used Ryzen CPU to its new owner, but something is not adding up

A Valorant player faced an unexpected ban after installing a recently purchased Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU, despite the hardware appearing unblemished on face value. The redditor reported that their Valorant account was immediately banned upon starting a match, with Riot citing the CPU's serial number as present on their anti-cheat blacklist.

However, Riot's in-house spokesman, Phillip Koskinas, disputed this claim, stating that the anti-cheat system does not blacklist entire systems based on a single banned component. Koskinas also clarified that Valorant's HWID bans are game-specific and typically last no more than four months, with Riot providing information on the remaining ban duration to affected players.

The anecdote raises questions about the potential ripple effects of banned hardware within the secondhand market, as other components in the user's PC, such as the motherboard and storage drive, also appeared blacklisted. Although Koskinas rejected this assertion, the incident highlights the potential complexity of Valorant's anti-cheat measures.

Riot has historically faced controversy over its kernel-level anti-cheat system, which requires advanced hardware features like TPM 2.0 and forces players to perform firmware updates. While Riot has loosened its always-on anti-cheat requirements, the Pre-Check mode remains active for certain PCs, potentially complicating the issue further.

Nonetheless, Koskinas emphasized that such instances are rare, with Riot encountering fewer than a dozen cases of inherited HWID bans. He also noted that Valorant's anti-cheat system is currently being utilized in various environments, including cybercafes where hardware bans are applied only when multiple users repeatedly cheat. Despite the apparent complexity surrounding hardware bans, the overall sentiment is that inherited HWID bans are an isolated issue and not a widespread concern.