Valorant Secure Boot Now

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.

The short answer is no. The long answer involves kernel-level drivers, billion-dollar cheating industries, and a fundamental shift in how PC gaming handles security. Let’s break down exactly what VALORANT’s Secure Boot requirement is, why it exists, and how to fix it without compromising your PC’s safety. To understand Secure Boot, you first have to understand the enemy. In the early 2010s, cheating software was relatively simple. Bots would read pixel colors; aimbots would move your mouse. Traditional anti-cheat software (like Easy Anti-Cheat or BattlEye) worked by scanning the game’s memory .

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.