Anyone buying used hardware for a gaming PC needs to be careful: not just whether the components are still in order but also what the previous owner did with them. A case on Reddit shows this. Someone installed a used AMD processor, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, in their PC. Because the previous owner was caught cheating, the new owner cannot start several online games.

The problem was noticed in the first-person shooter “Valorant” from the development studio Riot. Right from the first start, the new owner was kicked out directly, according to their statement. Riot support confirmed that the previous owner had cheated. The processor is therefore on an internal blacklist – and, with its installation in the PC, now apparently also some other components like the mainboard. Riot support does not remove such entries manually.

In addition to “Valorant,” all other PC games from Riot are affected: the strategy game “League of Legends,” the auto-battler “Teamfight Tactics,” the card game “Legends of Runeterra,” the fighting game “2XKO,” and likely future titles as well.

Anti-Cheat deeply integrates into the system

The studio uses its own anti-cheat system called “Vanguard.” By default, it runs deeply embedded in the Windows kernel mode and requires autostart. If “Vanguard” crashes in this mode, players must completely restart the PC to continue playing. For years, Riot argued that this was the only way to prevent cheats running in the background.

Only in June 2026 did an update appear that relaxes the autostart requirement. If players activate various security functions, Riot allows “Vanguard” to start parallel to the beginning of a game session. This requires, among other things, that the Trusted Platform Module (TPM, usually as firmware-TPM in the processor), Secure Boot, and functions that protect the RAM from manipulation are activated.

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Identification Tricks

It is unclear how Riot uniquely identifies processors. While CPUs report a hardware ID to the operating system, they only reveal which model it is. A Ryzen 7 5800X3D, for example, is not distinguishable from another Ryzen 7 5800X3D without further ado.

Intel’s Pentium 3 processors from 1999 untypically had unique identifiers. At the time, they caused protests: data protectionists feared that the readable serial number would act like a permanent cookie and make users trackable without gaps.

Riot could create hardware fingerprints for tracking, for example, with a combination of clock behavior and voltages. Each processor behaves slightly differently and can thus be identified.

However, from the studio’s perspective, it would be much easier to write identification hashes into the Trusted Platform Module. Because this TPM sits as a coprocessor directly in the CPU in most PCs, the hash remains when switching to a new PC. At least in the mode where “Vanguard” starts parallel to the game, Riot certainly accesses the TPM.

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(mma)