Riot Games is joining the fighting game world with 2XKO, a Runeterra-themed brawler designed to bring fan-favorite League of Legends champions to a new genre—and many are wondering if the studio’s controversial anti-cheat program Vanguard is coming too.
Vanguard, which started life packaged alongside VALORANT in 2020 and then successfully shipped in League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics early in Season 14, has its fair share of doubters. Amid the PC-bricking claims and concerns around its kernel-level digging, some gamers simply want to avoid it.
All this has led to early questions around whether Riot’s anti-cheat software will be making the leap to 2XKO when the fighting game ships.
The answer, as it turns out, won’t shock many 2XKO players.
Will 2XKO require Vanguard?
Yes, Riot’s fighting game 2XKO will only work if Vanguard is installed and running on your computer. This has become the standard for all the company’s games since its in-house anti-cheat software launched.
As League and VALORANT players have discovered since they had Riot’s kernel-level program added to their games, there’s no way around this. Closing the anti-cheat software is fine, but any Riot title opened without it already running will display a warning message instead of launching.
Why does 2XKO need Vanguard installed?
Riot’s stance on Vanguard in 2XKO is clear: There’s no room for cheating in any of their titles, not least in a fighting game where every millisecond of data and movement can be the difference in any given battle.
2XKO tech lead Tony Cannon recently explained that Vanguard’s main aim in the fighting game will be to hunt down cheats that help (or read) inputs. “They involve modifying the game binary in some way,” he said. “Vanguard is really good at that. It’s a kernel-level anti-cheat, so it can detect and prevent a lot of those things happening.”
Cannon added Vanguard won’t “compromise” players—a preemptive statement likely fuelled by the PC-bricking claims from the program’s League’s launch.
