Riot Games announced on June 24, 2026, that players of League of Legends and Valorant can switch the Vanguard anti-cheat software from an always-on to an on-demand mode. This new feature, called Vanguard Pre-Check, permits the kernel-level driver to avoid launching when the system starts.

Players must opt into "pre-boot security mechanisms and Windows' own native protection features" to enable the on-demand mode. In this configuration, Vanguard will launch when a game does and will only operate while a Riot title is being played. Phillip Koskinas, Riot's head of anti-cheat, stated, "You only need to do anything if you'd like to enable on-demand mode, which will allow Vanguard to launch when the game does and remain running only while you're playing a Riot title."

Using Vanguard Pre-Check requires a system running at least Windows 11 25H2. Koskinas indicated that this specific version of Windows is necessary because the driver attestation report was added in this release. "The driver attestation report was only initially added in this version, but it's also because, due to the natural progression of security, it gets more convenient to cheat the older your operating system is," Koskinas said.

Riot Games collaborated with the Xbox OS Security Team at Microsoft on improvements to the Windows kernel. These enhancements work to prevent driver and memory exploits, which are utilized by cheats such as wallhacks, aimbot, and triggerbot. The company uses a Windows security feature, the Runtime Driver Attestation Report, to maintain a secured list of device drivers loaded since booting.

Approximately 35 percent of players currently meet the necessary requirements to utilize Vanguard Pre-Check. Players meeting these requirements can switch to on-demand mode with their next update. Activating Vanguard on-demand mode requires several features to be enabled, including UEFI Mode, Secure Boot, Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM), Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), Hypervisor-Protected Code Integrity (HVCI), and Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU).