League of Legends content creators have been mourning their creations ahead of fears that the implementation of Vanguard to League will disable custom skins and tools.
The Vanguard system was originally designed for Valorant, as part of Riot’s pledge to “go to war” on cheaters when the game was first announced.
With the imminent arrival of the 2024 season, however, Riot announced they would be bringing Vanguard to League as well, as part of a wider crackdown on scripts, bots, and other third-party programs.
However, targeting third parties means that the programs that some creators use to make custom skins for their favorite champions could be disabled as part of the crackdown. The new anti-cheat may also cause difficulties for tools used by creators like SkinSpotlights and others.
Riot adds Vanguard anti-cheat to League of Legends
Shortly after the announcement, which came during Riot’s rundown of new features for the 2024 season, several creators took to social media to voice their concerns.
One player feared that “Riot announcing that vanguard will now be mandatory to play league is pretty much confirmation that custom skins will now be pretty much unusable.”
This is a very sad day, riot announcing that vanguard will now be mandatory to play league is pretty much confirmation that custom skins will now be pretty much unuseable.Small community of people that put lots of work/passion into creating those silly mods just got a huge… pic.twitter.com/b3b7PdOGaX
— Maks Przychodzień (@Drututt) January 5, 2024
Top League content creator SkinSpotlights said that the third-party program they use for videos would be significantly affected by the Vanguard implementation, as it would change “fast video recording, consistent camera positioning, S Mark, interactions, and chromas.”
Content creator Bomba Guy, known for making custom skins for League, jokingly posted a job application form in response to the announcement.