Valorant player claims to have inherited hardware ban through secondhand CPU, Riot anticheat boss disputes parts of story
A Valorant player claims to have unknowingly inherited a hardware ban after purchasing a secondhand CPU from a previous owner who had been banned from the game. According to the user’s post on the German-language PCBaumeister subreddit, Riot support informed them that the ban is now permanently associated with all of their PC components, with no possibility of appeal or removal.
The incident highlights the extreme anti-cheat measures esports developers have increasingly adopted to combat cheating. However, Phillip Koskinas, head of Riot’s anticheat division, disputes key aspects of the user’s account. Koskinas stated that Valorant’s hardware bans are time-limited, lasting only four months, and cannot “infect” or transfer to other components when a banned piece of hardware is installed into a new system.
The conflicting accounts raise questions about how hardware bans actually function and whether players could genuinely face penalties due to equipment purchased from banned users. While the scenario is unusual, it underscores growing concerns about the scope and permanence of hardware-based anti-cheat enforcement in competitive gaming.