Vanguard, the controversial anti-cheat software initially attached to Valorant, is now also coming to League of Legends.
Summary:
The article discusses Riot Games’ requirement for players to install their Vanguard anti-cheat software, which runs at the kernel level, in order to play their games such as League of Legends and Valorant. The software aims to combat cheating by scanning for known vulnerabilities and blocking them, as well as monitoring for suspicious activity while the game is being played. However, the use of kernel-level software raises concerns about privacy and security, as it grants the company complete access to users’ devices.
The article highlights that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese tech giant that has been involved in censorship and surveillance activities in China. This raises concerns that Vanguard could potentially be used for similar purposes, such as monitoring players’ activity and restricting free speech in-game.
Ultimately, the decision to install Vanguard rests with players, but the article urges caution and encourages players to consider the potential risks and implications before doing so.
You couldn’t be more wrong bud. Flatpaks do not require sudo, executables run from a directory (like how Steam games are run) don’t require sudo either. You only need sudo if installing from the main package manager like deb, rpm, pacman or whatever your distro uses. Most games on Linux aren’t installed from the main package manager though.
If it’s a package for the package manager you could download the archive for it and pull it apart to see its contents, it’s usually very clear when such software includes kernel drivers or kernel patchers. Most software on Linux uses the package manager to install or a script to unpack, both of which are relatively easy to explore even if the software isn’t open source, haven’t found too many linux apps with Binary installers, they might exist but if they do they aren’t popular or common.
Since this keeps coming up, I edited the post you replied to. TLDR is that we are assuming different contexts.