Valorant may enforce the TPM requirement on Windows 11 to battle cheaters
The competitive gaming scene is particularly fierce on PC, but many of the most popular options regularly suffer under the onslaught of hackers and cheaters. Valorant, from Riot Games, is a first-person team-based shooter that has mostly escaped the scourge of hacking in competitive gaming with incredibly aggressive and thorough anti-cheat software known as Vanguard. Now, according to PCGamer, it seems Valorant may become even more effective at combating potential cheaters.
Riot Games plans to do this by embracing the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) requirement on Windows 11. TPM is an effective security measure in the majority of modern PCs that effectively verifies the legitimacy of your computer, and makes hacking in most competitive games nearly impossible. With Windows 11, Microsoft now requires that all computers feature TPM version 2.0 and have it enabled, a requirement that Riot Games is now imitating with Valorant.
This move will make cheating even more uncommon in Valorant, and highlights both the good and bad of Riot Games’ method for rooting out bad actors. On the one hand, it does work, and Valorant is mostly a clean and fair experience free of rampant cheats and hacks, but on the other hand, Valorant’s Vanguard anti-cheat software requires extensive access to your PC and can carry out effective, permanent, hardware-level bans to offenders with TPM 2.0 access.
For now, it seems like Windows 10 is not affected by this change. TPM chips are still common in most Windows 10 PCs, but the vast majority of people are likely not aware if it’s enabled, or even if it exists. It remains to be seen if Riot Games intends to extend this TPM 2.0 requirement to Windows 10 PCs as well.
If you’re curious, you can check if your PC supports TPM 2.0, and even learn how to enable TPM on your PC. If you want to continue playing Valorant, one of the best PC games for fans of competitive shooters, you may want to ensure TPM is enabled on your PC (this comes with the added benefit of massively increased security and Windows 11 support).
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Don’t have TPM support? Try one of these motherboard modules.
If your PC somehow does not have trusted platform module (TPM) support through firmware and your UEFI BIOS, we’d recommend checking your motherboard manual for a TPM header. If you have one present, you can try to see if one of these will be compatible to get you ready for Windows 11.