Riot Games is introducing the Vanguard Pre-Check feature, which allows League of Legends, VALORANT, and 2XKO players to enable the Vanguard anti-cheat only while playing. From now on, the kernel-level driver will no longer launch together with the operating system and will instead run exclusively when launching Riot games.
The new feature became possible thanks to Riot's collaboration with Microsoft's Xbox OS Security team to improve Windows kernel security. To eliminate the need for around-the-clock system monitoring while still preventing cheating, Riot has implemented a built-in Windows feature called Runtime Driver Attestation Report. It generates a secure report of all device drivers loaded since the computer was turned on.
Switching to the "on-demand" mode is entirely optional. To use the anti-cheat in on-demand mode, a computer must meet the following technical requirements:
As a reminder, Vitality's CS2 roster earned nearly $3 million in prize money during the first half of 2026.
