Redditor Buys Used CPU, Discovers It's Banned on Valorant
Redditor buys used CPU, turns out it was banned on Valorant and they are SoL
A Reddit user bought a second-hand CPU, only to find it was hardware-banned by Valorant's anti-cheat system. The ban is tied to the processor's unique hardware ID, so the new owner can't play the game and has little recourse. The Hacker News discussion weighs the risks of buying used PC parts and the permanence of hardware bans.
Redditor buys used CPU, turns out it was banned on Valorant and they are SoL
- xnx
When the hardware you bought snitches on you, it is clear that you do not own it. Somewhere we got things ass-backward. The human tells the computer what it can/can't do, not the other way around.
- niels8472
Big game needs you to install a rootkit to play. But hey you can trust people selling crack^wloot boxes to kids right.
- orbital-decay
That's a well known risk when buying used hardware, although I doubt a blacklisted CPU could do that alone. I used to host a bunch of pretty popular servers for survival games many of which used hardware ID checks, and we had about a dozen people banned due to this in ~5 years. We had extremely thorough investigations and they were 100% clean.
- m-p-3
We'll eventually need something like CarFax where you can look for hardware bans for multiple softwares and games before you purchase a part..
- wxw
TIL you can ban CPUs