VALORANT anti-cheat lead Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain explained today that developers are working with Nvidia to stop players from exploiting graphics settings to see through smoke.
A VALORANT player thought some foul play was afoot when the enemy Viper was able to kill their entire team through toxic gas. Upon looking at the exploiter’s Twitch broadcast, the player noticed the graphics settings were tweaked considerably.
“Yeah, I’m working with Nvidia to figure out the best way to stop this kind of thing,” Arkem said. “Definitely don’t recommend people do this… it’s not hard to detect.”
The Viper player likely turned down their Level of Detail (LOD), which affects how objects are rendered within the game. With low LOD settings, the smoke wouldn’t render properly and players can see past it.
This exploit is obviously problematic since players could get shot without knowing where their attacker is coming from. But fans shouldn’t be too worried about it becoming a game-wide epidemic.
While Riot and Nvidia are trying to figure out how to fix the issue, players who are exploiting graphics settings are easy to detect. Since it’s clearly a form of cheating, offending players will likely be banned immediately.
