VALORANT reports massive ban wave targeting boosted accounts

Phillip Koskinas, Riot Games’ Head of Anti-Cheat, reported 296,416 bans against booster accounts, alongside significant consequences including more than 33 million RR removed through VALORANT’s Vanguard system. The anti-cheat system has been working to identify boosted, smurf, and purchased accounts that have been disrupting the ranked queue.

Vanguard Anti-Boost

The Vanguard Anti-Boost system was first introduced in League of Legends in 2025. After nearly a year of beta testing, the system has now also been adopted by VALORANT.

Its goal is to identify accounts being accessed by someone other than the legitimate owner, helping prevent the matchmaking system from being manipulated.

VALORANT can now flag these accounts, remove any rewards gained by the booster, and issue temporary suspensions. As always, repeated offenses can ultimately lead to a permanent ban. Accounts that played alongside boosted accounts can also face penalties.

According to Riot Games, the Anti-Boost system has been successful in identifying boosting accounts over the past year. Since late 2025, Riot Games has banned exactly 296,416 accounts for rank manipulation across both VALORANT or League of Legends. They have also removed 33,083,190 Rank Rating (RR) and liquidated 105,718,655 League Points (LP).

Over the past 365 days, the Vanguard system has detected and reverted numerous boosted accounts in VALORANT, with the highest concentration occurring in the Platinum and Diamond ranks.

Reasons your account could be suspended

Riot Games has been refining its system to better identify accounts involved in suspicious activity. Several types of behavior can result in an account being suspended and its rank being removed.

• Sharing the account with a boosting service to rank up for you
• Paying boosters to queue with you on smurfs, even if you’re playing on your own account
• Giving your higher-rated friend a lower-rated account to queue with you on
• Buying or borrowing a low-rated account to record frag footage for social media
• Deliberately losing to derank an account, especially if you also use that account to boost another player
• Bypassing chat bans on your main account by buying a new one
• Ranking up your friends by queuing with them on accounts you don’t actually own
• 5-stacking with four other smurfs while you are also yourself smurfing and advertising your account-selling services in all-chat

In future, the goal is to further improve the ranked experience by removing bots, refining matchmaking, and punishing players who attempt to exploit the system through boosting or cheating and disrupt the overall ranked experience.

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Featured Image by Riot Games