Isn't RIOT do something hardware-side in the motherboard BIOS to be able to play Valorant?
Does it work?
Yeah, kernel-level anti-cheat.. can't start the game w/o having to restart first, if it's not already running. Counter-Strike has something similar with a third-party organization called Faceit(ESEA is defunct in that regard, folded that into Faceit; but
ESEA was the one using people's computers to mine BTC) that runs large tournaments and has been branching out to other games and has been working towards being an anti-cheat application for "competitive" games. I want to say CoD has also moved in that direction, but i'm not 100% on where it's at... but wherever it is, it's not entirely effective.
Two things though, everyone cries about the kernel-level anti-cheat. Waahwewaahhwoo, invasive ect... second, while it is effective, it still hasn't stopped it whole stop. It still bleeds through.. but it has a positive success rate. It's also gotta be noted that riot had a starting budget of 80mil towards just the anti-cheat development according to one of the developers.. most other games contract anti-cheat companies to take, what is presumed as, the majority workload in sifting out cheaters..
And on that note, Nikita has said, iirc.. that they don't want to pursue something like a kernel-level anti-cheat. Oh and from what I understand, there are actually cheats now that exist outside of your computer files through third-party devices, and other pc hardware disguised as pc hardware but actual cheats.. ontop of some cheats from what I understand, work through discord stream lol. The actual cheat market is fucking wild. Tarkov is unique, it just feels the most punishing because of time invested means gains, and what could be 3 hrs of work can be gone in 2 minutes.. otherwise, it's a pretty large industry issue across a lot of games.. lawsuits do go out in some cases.