It doesn’t brick any hardware at all.

They’re using the IOMMU page table enforcement hardware (VT-d/AMD-Vi) to block DMA access to specific areas of memory.

This press coverage is largely just Valorant tooting their own horn. It will block the current generation of DMA hardware but there are several ways to bypass the IOMMU enforcement via hardware.

So, they simply rendered the current generation of DMA hardware obsolete. There will be new DMA cheats pretending to be Thunderbolt 4 controller devices (which are trusted to do their own IOMMU enforcement) or a PCI-e ATS device.

if I’m reading this right there’s no hardware damage at all, the “paperweight” comment just means they’ve successfully mitigated against a specific device, rendering it useless for this purpose, but it still works as intended against vulnerable games.

Kind of a nothing burger honestly, if I’m understanding right. Scary that they have that much access tho, which is the real problem, since they’re leaving a whole bunch of other peoples’ front doors wide open

Cheating or not, if they destroy property, it’s illegal and unethical.

Why the fuck would anyone install kernel level back doors on their systems just baffles me.

Just another reason for me to avoid these types of games. These systems are notorious of false positives and bricking a users system, cheating or not, is going away to far and why they should never be allowed that level of access.

Isn’t this illegal?

I didn’t want to play these games anyway. You dont have to keep convincing me not to, riot.