League of Legends cheaters’ jobs just got a little harder thanks to a new form of anti-cheat system coming to the game. The kernal anti-cheat advancement, developer Riot says, is designed toward “protecting you from aimbots, protecting us from Reddit, and protecting cheaters from themselves”.
Riot announced the news in a development blog from anti-cheat engineer Phil Koskinas. The developer explains the situation using a helpful kitchen analogy: “We (in user-mode) have to ask the kitchen (Microsoft Windows) what’s been added to our beef goulash (League of Legends).” To get into the nitty-gritty: Riot’s existing anti-cheat measures have more restricted access to users’ systems than cheaters do. This means the anti-cheat systems often can’t detect cheaters, even when they’re there. By allowing the anti-cheat system greater access – to your device’s kernel – it should be able to detect more cheaters.
Koskinas explains: “An abundance of cheats currently run at a higher privilege level than our anti-cheat does. To put that in the terms of our immaculate kitchen analogy: when we ask the head chef if our goulash ingredients are actually farm-to-table, some random dude in a toque convinces restaurant management that he’s ‘got this’ and then replies to our request with, ‘Sure my guy, dig in.'”
The new kernel driver method is already used in other anti-cheat systems, Riot says, and will be used in every Riot game going forward. You can read more about the changes and the new system in the developer blog.
The MOBA’s new Clash mode is launching soon, too, bringing new ways to play as teams with your friends. Details are still a little sparse, but LoL patch 10.4 is just around the corner, dropping on February 20 according to the 2020 League of Legends patch schedule. That’s just a couple of days before Clash, so perhaps we’ll hear more from Riot about it very soon.