Valorant will ask you to update your BIOS, in case they think you might cheat
Riot Games says it found a motherboard firmware flaw that can let hardware cheats inject code before Windows and Vanguard load. Vanguard will start enforcing stricter boot security checks, and affected systems can get blocked from launching VALORANT until the motherboard firmware is updated.
The issue sits in the pre-boot phase. When you power on a PC, UEFI firmware runs first and initializes hardware. Windows comes later. A cheat that loads earlier has higher privilege and more room to hide than anything that starts inside the OS.
And that is precisely what the Vanguard team’s research uncovered. In some cases, hardware manufacturer firmwares incorrectly signaled to the operating system that this feature was fully active, when it was actually failing to initialize the IOMMU correctly during early boot.
This meant that while “Pre-Boot DMA Protection” settings appeared to be enabled in the BIOS, the underlying hardware implementation wasn’t fully initializing the IOMMU during the earliest seconds of the boot process. In essence, the system’s “bouncer” appeared to be on duty, but was actually asleep in the chair. So by the time the system is fully loaded, it can’t be 100% confident that 0 integrity breaking code was injected via DMA.
— Riot Games
Riot’s write-up points to “Pre-Boot DMA Protection” and the IOMMU, which are meant to block rogue PCIe devices from touching system memory during boot. In affected firmware, the system can report that DMA protection is enabled while the IOMMU is not actually initialized early enough. C
The fix is a BIOS update from your board vendor. Gigabyte says firmware updates are out across many Intel and AMD platforms, with some schedules still in progress depending on the board family. ASRock’s advisory for CVE-2025-14304 also points users to updated BIOS releases, with different timelines by chipset generation.
For most players, this is not a remote compromise story. The attack needs physical access plus a DMA-capable device. The practical impact is enforcement: if Vanguard flags your system as affected, you can see a VAN:Restriction and you will need to update BIOS and ensure the required security options are enabled to play.
Unlike most security updates, this one can require a BIOS update as a baseline anti-cheat measure, not because your system is at risk of being hacked but because you might use hacks.
Source: Riot Games
