A Valorant player claims to have bought a secondhand CPU and gotten the previous owner’s hardware ban along with it. Riot Games’ anticheat boss disputes part of the story, but not all of it. The saga raises questions about how far gaming companies can go to stop cheaters — and how far they can inconvenience innocent buyers.
The Player’s Claim
User After-Cartoonist-196 posted on the German-language PCBaumeister subreddit. The user says they purchased a CPU on September 21, and discovered the ban was logged on August 12. That means the ban predates the sale by weeks.
According to the post, Riot support told the player that the ban was now attached to all of their other PC components. There is nothing the company can do to lift it.
“pretty unlikely.”
That is what Riot anticheat head Phillip Koskinas said on Twitter, where he disputed parts of the story.
What Koskinas Says
Koskinas could not find a support ticket matching After-Cartoonist-196’s details. He pointed out that Riot hardware bans last four months, and that they cannot “infect” other components when inserted into a new system.
He also noted that Riot support is required to provide the remaining duration of the ban when responding to a ticket. That contradicts the claim that support told the player the ban applied to every part of their PC.
What Stands
The story holds together even after Koskinas’s pushback. If the ban started on August 12, it will not hit its four-month expiration until mid-December. That timeline fits the player’s account.
Koskinas firmly debunked one aspect of the story: he denied, in two separate posts, that a system’s other hardware is blacklisted when detected alongside a banned component.
What remains is the core claim — that a secondhand CPU carried a ban from its previous owner. That is not the same as the whole story being confirmed, but it is the part that has not been challenged.
Why This Matters
Extreme surveillance measures have been adopted by esports devs in recent years to combat and punish endemic cheating. Kernel-level anticheat tools, which monitor the deepest layer of the operating system, are common in competitive games. Riot uses them.
The story speaks to how invasive these measures have become. A player buys a CPU, and suddenly they are locked out of their favorite game. That is an aggravating, Kafkaesque ordeal, no matter the duration.
What We Don’t Know
The story has circulated on social media and was reported by PC World. We reached out to After-Cartoonist-196 before Koskinas’s public response, and the core of the story — that this player inherited another’s hardware ban — still seems plausible.
But we do not know the full truth. The original Reddit account has not been independently verified. Support records have not been made public. The story has spread because it is strange and compelling, not because it has been settled.
The Bigger Picture
Riot is a large company with many divisions and external contractors. A shoddy support response could result in a miscommunication. The official policy cited by Koskinas may be accurate, but the company’s practices are not always consistent across all of its teams.
The story raises questions about how gaming companies handle used hardware. Should a CPU carry a history of bans? Should a player be punished for buying a secondhand part?
There is no easy answer. Competitive games need strong anticheat measures to survive. Players deserve fair play. But innocent buyers should not be caught in the crossfire.
Final Word
The story is unlikely, but not impossible. It is a reminder that the lines between hardware and identity are blurring in gaming. A CPU is no longer just a processing chip — it carries a record.
Koskinas debunked one part of the story. The rest stands. The saga continues, and the anticheat debate will likely keep simmering until the ban expires.
Source material: “Valorant player claims to have inherited hardware ban through secondhand CPU, Riot anticheat boss disputes parts of story,” PC Gamer.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.