Ask HN: Is the game Valorant snooping on me?

5 points

3 years ago

first off sorry for posting here. i know this isn't a gamer forum but when trying to ask other players on the r/valorant reddit my question is immediately deleted by moderators saying it's "technical and account support". i know there's a diverse community here so i'm hoping this is an acceptable subject and maybe someone can explain to me what's going on.

lately windows keeps giving me notifications that vanguard (vgc.exe, the game's anti-cheat thingamajig) was blocked from trying to access protected folders.

example - https://i.imgur.com/9eGvnFS.png

the partition e:\ as seen in the screenshot isn't even where windows or valorant is installed. it's a separate partition where i keep backups and other personal stuff. there isn't a folder named ":dt" in there for it to read files from, and additionally it's not even possible to use : (colon) character in folder names on windows. so what's going on? what is it doing, and why is it trying to do it on my private things?

after being a bit disturbed by this i figured i could try reinstall the whole thing (because i really love the game). so i did. and when i next tried to launch the new installation another detail in a windows notification caught my eye:

"Publisher: CN" - https://i.imgur.com/bzopjtG.png

what publisher/developer is "CN" even? why isn't it riot games? i've never heard about this developer in context of valorant. what the h*ll have i installed and what is it doing?

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