Valorant’s anti-cheat has already started banning players using keyboard and mouse on consoles

Riot Games’ Valorant is a popular 5v5 shooter game, which has only been available on PC since its launch in 2020. During the Summer Game Fest 2024, Riot Games announced that Valorant will be coming to Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5. There is currently a limited beta running in select countries, allowing players to try out the shooter title ahead of its global launch. This also gives Riot Games feedback to iron out bugs and issues and polish the game port in time for release.

Even with the game in its limited beta stages, Valorant is apparently well-equipped to detect and ban players who are using a keyboard-and-mouse on consoles. Given that the title is released on console, players who compete with controllers will be at a disadvantage against players using keyboard-and-mouse, this typical PC input combination is banned on Valorant and many other shooter titles on console.

Spotted by Twitter/X account ​​Anti-Cheat Police Department, a video shows a Valorant player who was illegally using a keyboard and mouse input on their console, caught mid-match, and kicked out of the game. The player also received a “Cheater Detected” message and that the match has been terminated.

This is a positive sign that Riot Games has already managed to bring its anti-cheat measures to the console port for Valorant. Given that Valorant has been around for four years now, they have had plenty of time to work and improve their Riot Vanguard, their own anti-cheating software.

It is quite common for new multiplayer shooter titles that release, to be vulnerable to hacks and cheats, like we have witnessed in Ubisoft’s XDefiant game. However, this does not mean that Valorant is mostly free of exploits and hacks. The fight against cheaters is constant and studios have to keep improving their measures to detect them as hacks become more complicated and harder to detect.

Valorant limited beta is currently ongoing in the North America, Europe, and Japan regions, and Riot Games says that they may expand to other regions later on.