Valorant Secure Boot May 2026

For many players, this felt like a violation. “Why does a video game need to control my BIOS settings?” others asked. “Is Riot spying on me?”

Without Secure Boot, a cheat could load a rootkit into the UEFI. Vanguard would look at the running system, see no anomalies, and let the cheater play. With Secure Boot on, that UEFI rootkit is stopped before it ever reaches the RAM. The backlash against the Secure Boot requirement was fierce. Players took to Reddit and Twitter with valid concerns:

So, take a deep breath, reboot into your BIOS, and flip that switch. The cheaters are praying you don't. And in the ranked lobbies of VALORANT , that’s a prayer we are happy to answer. Have you successfully enabled Secure Boot? Still getting the error? Drop your motherboard model in the comments below. valorant secure boot

In five years, you likely won’t be able to play any major competitive online game without Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 enabled. As a gamer, being asked to dig into your BIOS is frustrating. Being told your perfectly functional five-year-old PC is suddenly "incompatible" stings. And the privacy concerns surrounding kernel-level anti-cheat are valid and worth discussing.

If you have tried to launch Riot Games’ tactical shooter VALORANT in the past year, you might have been greeted by a confusing error message. Not a simple “Update your drivers” notification, but a cryptic red screen demanding something called Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 . For many players, this felt like a violation

However, for the health of competitive gaming, Secure Boot is a net positive. It raises the bar for cheaters from "download a free script" to "physically hack your motherboard." It forces cheat developers to compete with billion-dollar hardware manufacturers.

There is a philosophical objection here. Many gamers argue that a video game should not have the authority to enforce system-wide security policies. They worry that if Riot can mandate Secure Boot, what happens if a bad actor exploits Vanguard’s kernel access? The Reality Check: It’s Working Despite the outrage, the data is undeniable. Before Vanguard and Secure Boot, VALORANT had a visible cheating problem—especially in high-ranked Immortal and Radiant lobbies. Post-implementation, public cheat forums have largely given up on developing public, undetected cheats for the game. Vanguard would look at the running system, see

Enter Secure Boot. Secure Boot is a security standard built into modern motherboards (UEFI, not legacy BIOS). Think of it as a digital bouncer that checks the ID of every driver and bootloader before allowing them to run.