A German gamer recently bought a used AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D and found that the CPU carried a pre-existing Valorant ban. The processor worked normally, but launching the game resulted in an immediate kick. Riot support reportedly told the buyer that the CPU had been blacklisted by Vanguard in August 2026 due to the previous owner's cheating, and that the ban could not be reversed.
The buyer claimed that "everything else" in their system was also blacklisted. Riot's anti-cheat specialist Phillip Koskinas disputed that, stating that hardware bans last a maximum of four months, are game-specific, and match only one component on the denylist. He also said support tells users how much time remains on a ban. The source notes this is a single account, so the discrepancy remains unresolved.
The incident highlights a broader risk in the used hardware market. Different anti-cheat engines handle hardware IDs differently: Easy Anti-Cheat bans affected hardware across all games using it, while BattleEye enforces permanent global bans. There is currently no way for a buyer to check whether a used CPU or GPU is flagged before purchase.