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Game client anti-cheat changes going live

Riot Perma·6/13/2018, 11:33:13 PM·44 votes·368,277 views

TL;DR: Anti-cheat improvements will soon be live. If you run into issues loading League, try temporarily disabling third-party software and reply to the thread below to let us know what did or didn’t work.

Hey everyone,

This week we’re rolling out anti-cheat changes to the League of Legends game client in North America, with other regions scheduled to follow shortly. These changes were created to help protect players from cheaters, and we’ve worked hard to help provide a safer and more competitive playing experience for everyone.

We’ve collaborated with software vendors and content creators to ensure compatibility with as many products as possible, but unfortunately, our update may still impact some legitimate third-party software.

There are a lot of legitimate applications out there that we know you love, and we can’t test them all. We’ll need your help to identify the software that’s incompatible.** If you encounter a critical error message during the game**, try temporarily uninstalling or disabling the following software, and then comment below with what you disabled and whether it worked.

- Security software (anti-virus and anti-malware products)
- In-game overlay software (Steam, Discord, TeamSpeak, Overwolf, ASUS Sonic Radar, etc)
- Streaming software (XSplit, OBS, Raptr, etc)
- Video capture software (Fraps, ShadowPlay, etc)

Our mission in creating this software is to keep the game fair for players everywhere. We know how frustrating it is when new features work in unexpected ways, so please comment below so we can look into any issues you’re facing and work toward resolving them as soon as possible.

See you on the Rift!

421 Comments

Hyrum Graff6/14/2018, 5:11:17 AM44 votes

Will this affect people playing on Linux using wine?

Villanelle6/14/2018, 12:42:20 PM29 votes

As someone who plays exclusively on Linux via Wine, I'm disappointed by this choice, as it means that I just won't be able to play anymore.

Chalseu6/14/2018, 10:36:47 AM28 votes

I will be asking something on behalf of Custom Skin community.

I'll preface this by saying that these changes will not stop what you call "skin porting", or basically making players use paid Riot skins instead of the base skin, for free. The custom skins isn't about that though. The custom skin community I am talking about is about creations, bringing back old textures and visuals, making new content. The modding and custom skin community is in my eyes an important part of the spaces where players can express and develop their creativity and love for the game.

Ever since the change of the champion's skin format to the "WAD" system, we have had to break the rules. The game checks the WAD files when it starts up a game, and if Riot's signature isn't on them, it will simply close and say an error happened, then it will repair your game. Therefore, we came up with a way to patch the game's exe so that it doesn't check for the WAD signature, lettins us use custom WAD and re-enable custom skins. This is fine except it's already against the rules to do anything on the .exe. We don't want to break the rules, but it was the only way for custom skins to continue existing.

With the encryption changes, we most likely will not be able to patch the .exe in that fashion, and even if we figure out a new way to do, players who do it might get flagged for cheating and receive punishments for essentially no reasons (as customs skins were always "use at your own risk but we tolerate it").

On behalf of the custom skin community, I seriously want a dialogue to be opened between us, creators, and Riot. We just want to be able to exist while staying in compliance in the rules. I think it is about time that actual discussion is started between us and Riot so that players can still have fun and express themselves in the space of modding and custom skins.

We already have started thinking about some solutions, and some changes are quite easy and costless to implement while not harming any of the security / anti cheat purposes that you are seeking.

In hope for an answer,

Sincerely yours, Charles "Hi I am me", EUW

Alab6/14/2018, 7:11:26 PM24 votes

So this is the reason why I cannot load after champion select and crash every time I try to load even it was just spectate or a custom Client fix isn't working at all problem still stands and now I see this. aright, I quit my steam, my discord closed almost all the programs. and I still cannot load the game. feel like I am forced to quit the game now.

JoeAnarchy6/15/2018, 1:31:33 AM16 votes

I really want to play :( cant you possibly just revert the changes for now, until you've figured out a fix? [sg-janna]

DÜWAP KAINE6/13/2018, 11:40:26 PM13 votes

So, when I am tilted, I use a script to disable my enter key to prevent me from typing in game. It is a simple Auto HotKey script that makes it so that when I press enter, it does nothing, which maps 1 keypress to 0. As far as I am concerned, this is legal, and there are multiple other posts on this board, and some even from Rioters saying that this is fine. I suggest you test this as well, because many people on this board use such a script as well. I do not want to risk getting banned for this. If you will ban people with those new changes, then make it some way to unbind enter key in game....

Also, I suggest testing Yolomouse. I play on 4k monitor and I use Yolomouse to make my mouse cursor larger because at full 4k resolution, the in game cursor is too small. It provides me no extra advantage in game. It just makes the cursor larger. Again, if you don't want people using this then add some way to change cursor size in game without being forced to lower the resolution...

BriboGarlic6/16/2018, 2:21:29 AM13 votes

Hey Riot, this is affecting a lot of linux users including myself. I hope there's going to be a solution for players who use programs like Wine in order to run League of Legends.

RenegadeImmortal6/14/2018, 5:51:08 AM12 votes

Why is riot actively blocking Virtual Machines? i don't see how it would help much with scripting or boting since those people will just run in it on local installs now or bypass the anti-cheat detection. It only serves to screw over legit users who use Virtual Machines to increase security or do it for GPU-passthrough? Virtual Machines are by all rights legit window PCs (which riot claims to support). Its essentially like saying that asus or acer laptops are not allowed to run the game, like some kind of PC racism. :(

IanGrove6/15/2018, 10:53:43 PM9 votes

ROIT UNDO THE ANTI CHEAT BULLSHIT THIS UPDATE IS GETTING RID OF MORE LEGIT PEOPLE THEN HACKERS COME ON ROIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [zombie-brand-mindblown]

Boomer Blitz6/15/2018, 11:46:15 PM9 votes

I figure it out guys; we're all trying to cheat. Fuck they caught us.

Have to uninstall the hacks i guess.

Jiminy Crick3t6/15/2018, 1:12:50 AM8 votes

I'm assuming this is the place to post this since I only ran into problems today and i was fine all yesterday. Also i am seeing many many people here with very similar problems to mine. Today i can go through champ select just fine, but right after champ select it sits on a black screen that when clicked on will come up with the not responding window. After doing many of the things I will list below, I decided to just let it stay there, and suprisingly, after almost 10 mins of the black screen it brings up the loading screen. From there it sits at 0% for about another 5 mins, with the loading wheel occaisionally moving until it finally starts to increase from 0%, and around 2 mins later it puts me in a game. From this point the game only plays at 2 frames per second, completely unplayable, and will not change. My computer is obviously more than powerful enough to handle league. Again im assuming this has something to do with the anti cheat software "improvements im hearing so many great things about. Here's what I've done.

-restarted my computera and updated all drivers -updated and turned off razer synapse -updated my norton antivirus as well as disabled it -uninstalled and reinstalled league of legends -run hextech repair tool(i have the logs if you want them but i doubt thats the problem at this point) -run league and its full repair as administrator

  • i have no other applications running besides synapse and my antivirus

none of these have worked in the slightest. Obviously i do not want to completely uninstall my antivirus(Norton 360). Here is the link for the dump file for the league process. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pAn_wkOwj_W_pQPhiFlarAjc7E7xOE32/view?usp=sharing

thanks for any help you guys can offer. If i somehow get it working ill post it here but im guessing since the only commonality is this anticheat software update after the patch yesterday and the similarity of the problem to others here, that there isnt much i can do without uninstalling perfectly functional parts of my computer.

edit:

I realise now that the dump file that i linked was for just normal running of the client.

Here is the dump file when it is stuck on a black screen not responding for 10 mins https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pAn_wkOwj_W_pQPhiFlarAjc7E7xOE32/view?usp=sharing

and here is the dump file for when it finally loads into game at a glorious 2 frames per second https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SmI-S32tF5kr3wfT_fPBFurBC51f60nl/view?usp=sharing

Arvelique6/16/2018, 1:56:19 AM8 votes

Nothing about working with the Virtual Environment software companies to make it compatible with your new anti-cheat?

Everyone that was playing on WINE/VMware etc will now have to quit the game (including me)

Seems fair after how much all of us Linux users have spent on your game. [slayer-jinx-unamused]

coolcourd6/17/2018, 4:49:37 PM8 votes

I am soooooo sad. You guys broke Wine. i would rather play with cheaters than not at all. please make a native linux client.

FearAndLoathing6/14/2018, 10:20:38 PM7 votes

Oh jeez guys, sure seems like you broke the game.

I love lol, its the only thing I really play but this is frustrating. I've disabled any malware software (windows defenders) on my computer to the extent possible and somehow I'm still just stranding teammates in oblivion whenever I start a game. I was playing fine last night. I'm an old dude attorney I dont have time to really work on this for you. I finally got into a game after a ton of starts, and it just completely froze up after 25 seconds after - everything was running on a 12 second delay. I really don't know what happened with this quick update but it screwed some of us in the name of getting cheaters.

Ker Primrose6/17/2018, 12:31:38 AM6 votes

Fck Riot, nice change, uninstall everything and still got fcked

Hz Xiao Dan Chun6/15/2018, 3:00:42 AM6 votes

So, is that means we cannot do anything to play the game unless they fix the problem? we have to look at the "reconnect" button over and over again?

thegray6/15/2018, 9:31:27 PM6 votes

this is bs i love lol but i love linux more come on this update could have been done better then this just make a linux version are make a work around for it plz i dont like to boot into windows to play the game its to low..

JoeAnarchy6/14/2018, 11:38:56 PM6 votes

Hi, I and, from the looks of the bug report boards, other players, are unable to connect to the game. the client loads, it lets me create a lobby, i can get through champ select just fine, but then once it tries to launch the game, it just shows the client with the "reconnect" button, as if i disconnected or left game, even tho i didn't. any attempt to reconnect just causes the same issue, closing league and relaunching never worked, and even running the repair tool didn't work. so i tried uninstalling and reinstalling, still nothing worked. it doesn't let me play at all, not ranked, not draft, not blind, no Co-op vs AI, not any of the practice tools, nothing. i'm running absolutly ZERO third party programs, i even tried shutting off my web browser.. i have nothing but my windows programs and league running, and still nothing. from what i see on the boards this is happening to other people. it even caused me to get leaverbusted, which made no sense..

i literally can't play now.

Drakker6/27/2018, 10:08:43 PM5 votes

Well, just want to add my little voice to Linux users. I guess the anti-cheat has been deployed in EUW with 8.13 as I cannot get past champ select since today. It has been great to play League for the last 6 years. And I'm very sad to have to let it go even if I was not more than a casual player for the last months.

Anyway, since 8.11, my role has been almost deleted from the rift. It's sad to get flamed for playing adc. I can't imagine League without midlaner, but I guess now we can imagine FNC playing without a marksman, it's reality. I was sad about that, and still tried to adapt and keep having fun.

And today, I connect, happy to enjoy my Vayne against Yasuo/Brand botlane, just for the beauty of the game. But which game? There is no more game as the critical error said. Sadly, I cannot choose League of Legends over Arch and Linux. I wish Tencent would have push its Linux efforts into LoL. Maybe one day. But for now I have to say:

Roses are red, Violets are blue, League you were sweet, But I leave you.

ChriSKate6/14/2018, 11:20:26 AM5 votes

Hey everyone, Chris from Overwolf here,

I would just like to point out that League of Legends is one of the top most popular games among our gamers, and this is why we take extra caution and make sure to check everything a gazillion times! That being said, I would love to hear from each and every one of you if you ever encounter any issue related to Overwolf. Feel free to reach out at [email protected] and our team will get right on it :)

*This, of course, applies to the RIOT team as well, thank you very much for your very appreciated cooperation!

Miss All Sundays6/28/2018, 11:20:03 AM5 votes

This is the time for Riot Games to make the decision: Linux or Not. This will be the point in history of gaming if Riot Games stopped letting Linux gaming down, and this might open the roads for other game companies to take Linux gaming serious. Will you let us down again Riot or will you support us finally?

BadNights6/17/2018, 12:48:41 AM5 votes

Well better start looking for a new game laters not waiting anymore

sector466/26/2018, 6:14:25 AM5 votes

There are a lot of legitimate applications out there that we know you love, and we can’t test them all. We’ll need your help to identify the software that’s incompatible.

While the idea to implement anti-cheat features is noble, this statement just doesn't sit right with me. If the solution isn't scalable and/or dynamic, it's gonna have huge issues when introduced to the myriads of different configurations that are used to run League.

What happens when new software is released that isn't compatible with the anti-cheat features? Will you have to write up a patch or two each and every time that new software is released to ensure it's anti-cheat compliant? To me, that doesn't seem feasible nor robust.

Being one of those minority LInux users since my introduction to League around 5 years ago, I've gone through a lot of the update changes and having to fix them in Wine time and time again. This wasn't a problem to me or others, as we could always find a way to work around the issues on the client side. However, when it gets to the point where we can't fix the issue on our side, then it feels like we're out of options.

My friends joke about how I should just dual-boot Windows to play all the games with them, but I'm firm about not supporting Windows because I think it's a terrible OS (my opinion).

I've held out for a Linux client for so long, but Riot doesn't want to support a Linux client with a small player base. I can't really blame them for that, it's a business and they don't really have any stake in Linux.

I hope this isn't how it ends guys, but it feels like it very well may be.

Tojil6/16/2018, 10:30:10 PM4 votes

Why are virtual machines or WINE considered cheating?

LoLTyrant6/23/2018, 11:53:48 AM4 votes

your anti-cheat isnt working people still cheat on aram and reporting people for doing so

mtmayr126/27/2018, 10:44:46 PM4 votes

Please let Linux players play with Wine again - or support a Linux version! This is ridiculous! I am playing LoL for 4 years now inside Linux.

(I only have Linux PCs, no Windows except in virtual machines; and the performance inside virtualisation is unsatisfying)

Pistaxo26/29/2018, 3:32:40 PM4 votes

hello team I'm a Linux user and i play league using wine, until last patch... I can't afford a new PC or mac, could you help me (and others like me) and distribute PC machines to all Linux users out there? (we have a very little market share) [slayer-pantheon-thumbs] Please support Linux, we are not cheaters![galio-happy]