Valorant Is Blocking Outdated Motherboards
If you play Valorant on a gaming PC with an Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, or ASRock motherboard, a BIOS update just became mandatory. Riot Games has started blocking players who have not installed new firmware patches that fix a serious security flaw in how some motherboards handle hardware level protection.
Instead of being a simple bug, this issue affects how the system protects memory during the earliest phase of boot. That makes it a perfect target for advanced cheats that try to slip under Riot Vanguard, the kernel level anti cheat that Valorant uses.
Players who do not update will see a VAN: Restriction message and will not be able to play. As far as Vanguard is concerned, an unpatched system looks too similar to one that could be used by a hardware based cheater.
What Is Going Wrong Under The Hood
To understand why this matters, you need a quick look at how modern gaming PCs protect memory. Valorant relies on a feature called IOMMU, which stands for Input Output Memory Management Unit. This is a part of the platform that controls how devices talk to system memory.
When IOMMU is used for security, it can check which devices are allowed to access memory and block unknown or rogue hardware from poking at sensitive areas. On many modern motherboards there is a related BIOS setting known as Pre Boot DMA Protection. DMA stands for Direct Memory Access. It lets devices move data in and out of memory very quickly, which is great for performance but dangerous if abused.
The idea behind Pre Boot DMA Protection is simple. Before the operating system even starts, the firmware uses IOMMU to prevent any shady device from using DMA to inject code into memory. Once the OS is up and running, it trusts that anything already inside the system is safe.
The problem that Riot and security researchers found is that some motherboard firmwares were not enabling this protection correctly. Worse, they were incorrectly telling the operating system that everything was fine when the protection was not really active.
Riot explains it this way. In some cases, the firmware reported that the feature was fully active even though it failed to initialize the IOMMU properly during early boot. That means a determined attacker or cheat developer could slip code into memory via DMA before protections are in place. By the time Windows has loaded and Vanguard wakes up, it cannot be completely sure that nothing has already been injected at a low level.
For a normal user this is a security risk. For a competitive shooter like Valorant where cheat developers are constantly looking for new attack paths, it is a huge red flag. It provides a way to hide cheats beneath the anti cheat layer itself using hardware access.
How This Affects Gamers And What You Should Do
Because of the risk, Riot shared details of the vulnerability with motherboard vendors. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock have all released or are releasing BIOS updates that correctly implement Pre Boot DMA Protection and fix the faulty behavior.
If you are a Valorant player on a desktop or gaming laptop with one of these boards, your steps are:
- Identify your exact motherboard model from your system specs, BIOS screen, or vendor utilities.
- Go to your manufacturer security advisory page, such as the ones for Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, or ASRock.
- Download the latest BIOS version that references the recent security CVE for DMA or IOMMU protection.
- Follow the official flashing instructions carefully. For most boards this means copying the BIOS file to a USB stick and using the built in EZ Flash or Q Flash tool in the BIOS menu.
Once the update is applied and settings are correct, Vanguard will recognize that your platform security is behaving properly again and you should be able to launch Valorant without the VAN: Restriction error.
Even if you do not care about Valorant, this is still a useful firmware update. The vulnerability can allow unintended access to system memory if someone has local access to your PC and can attach a malicious device. For most home gamers that scenario is unlikely, but for shared systems, LAN setups, or high value machines it is one more layer of protection.
There is a trade off here that some PC enthusiasts will notice. Vanguard is reaching very deep into your system stack. It checks firmware behavior and now effectively forces BIOS updates for competitive integrity. Players who already dislike kernel level anti cheat running all the time or interacting with firmware will not love that it now influences BIOS maintenance too.
On the other hand, this is another sign of how far the cheat versus anti cheat arms race has gone. Simple game side checks are no longer enough. Developers are watching motherboard firmware, DMA behavior, and low level memory handling just to keep matches fair.
For PC gamers the takeaway is clear. Keep your BIOS up to date and pay attention to vendor security advisories, especially if you play competitive titles with aggressive anti cheat systems. A firmware update might not be as exciting as a new GPU or CPU, but in this case it is the difference between getting into a ranked match and being locked out of the game entirely.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/motherboards/you-wont-be-able-to-play-valorant-until-you-update-your-motherboard-bios-this-is-a-necessary-step-in-our-arms-race-against-hardware-cheats/
