If you are reading this, you are probably about to either install something risky on your gaming PC, or you are recovering from a ban and trying to figure out what just happened. Either way, the right question to start with is not "will I get banned?" — it is "if I get banned, what exactly is Riot going to ban?"
Because Riot Vanguard, the kernel-level anti-cheat that protects Valorant and (since 2024) League of Legends, does not just ban your account. It bans your hardware. And the line between "account ban" and "HWID ban" matters a lot once you understand what each one actually does to your machine.
This post is the long version. If you just want the short version: yes, Vanguard can hardware-ban you; the ban targets your motherboard, CPU, TPM 2.0 chip, disks, and MAC; it survives Windows reinstalls and most spoofers; and the two paths out in 2026 are a TPM-aware spoofer or a Vanguard emulator. The rest of this post explains why, when, and how that plays out.
What "HWID ban" actually means
When you log into Riot's launcher, Vanguard reads a set of hardware identifiers from your machine and reports them to Riot's backend along with your account. These identifiers are the hardware fingerprint. The exact list has expanded over the years, but in 2026 it includes:
- Motherboard serial number — read from the BIOS / UEFI.
- CPU ID — the unique identifier baked into your processor at manufacture.
- TPM 2.0 manufacturer ID — the Trusted Platform Module chip on modern motherboards (Vanguard added TPM checking in 2024).
- Disk serial numbers — every HDD and SSD plugged in at the time.
- MAC addresses — every network adapter the OS exposes, including virtual ones.
- Disk volume IDs — secondary identifiers from formatted partitions.
When Riot's anti-cheat backend decides to ban you for cheating, it adds those identifiers to a ban list. The next time Vanguard tries to start on a machine that matches any of those identifiers, the service refuses to initialize — and you get an error like VAN 152 or VAN -69.
This is the part that catches people off guard: the ban is not on your account, it is on your hardware. A new account on the same machine still hits the ban list. A friend who installs League on your PC also hits the ban list. The ban persists until you change the hardware or change what the OS reports as the hardware.
Account ban vs HWID ban — the practical difference
Riot can issue three flavors of consequence:
- Account ban. Specific account is locked. Other accounts on the same machine still work. The hardware fingerprint is not affected.
- HWID ban. The hardware fingerprint is flagged. Every account on this hardware fails to launch Vanguard. The user account itself may or may not be banned in addition.
- Soft suspension. Temporary mute, ranked restriction, or in-game timeout. Usually unrelated to anti-cheat — these come from player reports and behavior systems.
The one most players experience is #1 (account ban). The one that ends gaming on a particular PC is #2. And Riot does not announce the difference in the email. The ban email tells you the account is banned. You only discover the HWID ban later, when you make a fresh account and Vanguard refuses to start.
If you have ever read a Reddit thread where someone says "I made a new account and Vanguard won't even open" — that is HWID ban. The account email is a smokescreen.
When does Vanguard hardware-ban?
Riot's official policy is opaque, but the operational pattern by 2026 is clear from years of watching ban waves:
- First-time cheating on Valorant: almost always HWID ban + account ban. Valorant is Riot's competitive title; they enforce harshest there.
- First-time cheating on League: historically account ban only, but since Vanguard came to League in 2024 we are seeing more HWID bans — especially when the player has multiple banned accounts on the same machine.
- Account suspensions for boosting or smurfing: rarely HWID. These come from behavior systems, not anti-cheat.
- Script detection (Hanbot, LegendSense, others): account ban + HWID ban depending on the script and detection method. Direct memory script reads = HWID. Overlay-based tools = account only (in practice).
- Ban evasion (returning on a new account after a ban): Riot is aggressive about this. Each evasion attempt risks an additional HWID flag, which is why ban appeals usually fail — by the time you appeal, you have three HWID flags layered on top of each other.
The honest summary: if you are caught with anti-cheat-detectable cheats on Valorant or modern League, you should expect an HWID ban. Hoping otherwise is wishful thinking, and planning otherwise is naïve.
How long does an HWID ban last?
Officially: forever. Riot does not have a published expiration policy for hardware bans. There is no "wait 90 days and try again" loophole that works at scale.
In practice we have seen:
- Year-old HWID bans still active on the same hardware. The ban list does not age out.
- Replacing the motherboard sometimes clears the ban, sometimes does not. Vanguard's secondary identifiers (CPU, TPM) can keep you flagged even with a new board.
- "Cleaning" the machine — fresh Windows install, BIOS update, disk wipe — does not clear the ban. The hardware identifiers persist below the OS layer.
If anyone tells you they "waited it out" and the ban lifted, they either got lucky (Riot has been known to clear specific waves they later judged false-positive), or they are misremembering whether they were HWID-banned in the first place. Do not plan around exceptions.
Why most spoofers will not save you on Vanguard
A spoofer is a tool that intercepts the hardware identifier reads from the OS and reports different values. From the perspective of Vanguard, the machine looks new — different motherboard serial, different MAC, different disks. The ban list does not match, Vanguard starts cleanly, you are back in the game.
That is the theory. In practice in 2026, most spoofers fail Vanguard because they do not touch TPM 2.0.
Here is the timeline:
- Before 2024: Vanguard checked motherboard serial, CPU ID, disks, MAC. Pretty much any spoofer that touched those four passed Vanguard.
- 2024: Vanguard added TPM 2.0 manufacturer ID to the fingerprint. Most spoofers had no TPM hooking. Suddenly, even after spoofing the motherboard, Vanguard could match the TPM ID to the ban list and reject the machine.
- 2026: A handful of spoofers added TPM 2.0 spoofing. Most still have not. The market is split, but the share of spoofers that actually work on a Vanguard-banned chassis is small — probably under 20% of what you find searching online.
For a spoofer to actually work on Vanguard in 2026, it needs:
- TPM 2.0 spoofing — without this, Vanguard sees the original chip ID and matches it to the ban list.
- HVCI compatibility — Windows 11 enables Hypervisor-protected Code Integrity by default. Many older spoofers cannot load with HVCI on.
- Secure Boot compatibility — same story; modern Windows installs require it.
- No BIOS flashing — flashing your BIOS to change the serial number works but carries brick risk. The premium spoofers in 2026 do this without touching firmware.
- Reversible — you want to be able to restore the original IDs to play other titles that flag spoofed hardware as suspicious.
Temp Spoofer is the spoofer we ship because it is the only one we tested that handles all five. If you are buying a spoofer anywhere else, the questions above are the ones to ask before you put money down.
The other path: stop Vanguard from running
There is a second strategy that sidesteps the spoofer question entirely. Instead of trying to fool Vanguard's fingerprint check, you stop Vanguard from actually running. A Vanguard emulator ships a small stub that satisfies the Riot Client's check for Vanguard being installed and active, but the real Vanguard service never loads. The kernel driver is not running. The fingerprint check is not happening. The ban list is not being consulted.
From your machine's perspective, there is no anti-cheat operating. HWID bans become irrelevant because nothing is reading the HWID to check.
This is what Atlas does for League of Legends. The trade-off compared to a spoofer:
- Pro: No spoofer needed at all. Atlas does not change your hardware identifiers; it just makes them not matter. You can keep your real serials for every other title.
- Pro: No VAN errors, ever. Not VAN 152, not VAN -69, not VAN 185. They are structurally impossible.
- Pro: No BIOS interaction, no HVCI/Secure Boot concerns.
- Con: Currently League-only. Valorant requires Vanguard to be the real Vanguard for match integrity, and emulators cannot fully satisfy that yet (this is a long technical story for another post).
- Con: A monthly subscription rather than a one-time spoofer purchase.
If you only care about League, Atlas is the cleanest solution. If you want to keep playing across Riot's catalog including Valorant, you need a spoofer.
What about other anti-cheats?
Vanguard is the strictest, but most kernel-level anti-cheats can HWID-ban. The bans tend to be less aggressive in practice:
- Easy Anti-Cheat (Apex Legends, ARC Raiders, EFT): yes, HWID bans exist. EAC's surface is mature in some titles but the ban list does not appear to be as deep as Vanguard's. We see fewer HWID flags per cheating incident on EAC titles.
- BattlEye (Tarkov, Rainbow Six): yes, HWID bans. BSG (Battlestate Games) is famously aggressive about wave-banning around wipes.
- Hyperion / Byfron (Roblox): no HWID bans in practice. Roblox's anti-cheat hardware-fingerprints but does not hardware-ban — risk is at the account level.
The takeaway: if Vanguard is the anti-cheat you are dealing with, assume HWID risk on any anti-cheat-detectable behavior. Other anti-cheats are easier-mode by comparison.
What to do if you are already banned
If Vanguard has already flagged your hardware and you want to play League again, your two real options are:
- Temp Spoofer — change the IDs Vanguard sees, including TPM 2.0. Works across Riot titles when paired with a fresh account. Lifetime license is $199.
- Atlas — emulate Vanguard so it never runs. League-only, $59.99/month, no spoofer required.
If you have two PCs and the second one is clean, Arch 2PC Bypass is a more conservative architecture (route your banned PC through a clean second machine). It costs more but the surface is smaller.
If you are not yet banned but are weighing the risk: read the League of Legends page for the longer picture on what tooling we recommend and why. And check the status page before any session — we pause sales on any product the moment we see a problematic Vanguard update.
Vanguard is not invincible. But the path back from an HWID ban is narrower than most people realize, and most of the "tips" you will find searching this topic are written by people who have only ever seen account-level bans. Plan for the harder case.
