Key information
A gamer from Germany who purchased a used AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D on September 21, 2026, discovered their hardware was blacklisted by Valorant's Vanguard anti-cheat on August 12, 2026, due to the previous owner. Riot Games customer service stated the ban could not be reversed and stemmed from the CPU HWID.
Following discussion on X, Riot Games anti-cheat specialist Phillip Koskinas clarified that hardware bans are game-specific and last for a maximum of four months, with support informing users of the time remaining. Koskinas also noted that the anti-cheat system matches only one component on the denylist rather than all parts of a gaming PC.
Other developers employ hardware ID bans with varying conditions. Easy Anti-Cheat bans users across all titles using it, while BattleEye enforces permanent global bans. Vanguard requires Secure Boot and TPM 2.0, and Call of Duty's Ricochet contacts Microsoft servers to verify the system remains untampered.
While affected buyers can wait out temporary bans or replace components, the risk remains that gamers purchasing used CPUs or GPUs have no way of checking for existing flags prior to purchase until they are kicked from a game.
