A Hidden Message in 'Valorant' Anti-Cheat Code Is Recruiting Hackers

The makers of League of Legends are trying to recruit hackers with a hidden message inside their latest game, the tactical shooter Valorant.

Riot Games hid ASCII art of the company logo and a recruiting message within a file that’s part of Valorant’s anti-cheat and anti-tamper system called packman, which is included in Valorant, League of Legends, and Legends of Runeterra.

"Protected by packman, a Riot Games product. Developed with <3 by the Anti-Cheat team. We're always hiring talented individuals. If you've found this message, we implore you to take a look at our jobs page and see if anything catches your interest: https://www.riotgames.com/careers."

In April, some hackers who reverse engineer video games looking for vulnerabilities to exploit and create cheats that will make it easier to beat the game and other players online found the message and shared it on a popular forum for cheaters. Two Riot Games employees told Motherboard that the message is indeed included in a file called Stubs.dll, which is part of the anti-tamper system.

In the last few years, video games companies have been engaged in a constantly escalating game of cat and mouse with hackers, trying to make their life harder and ultimately attempting to get rid of cheaters in popular online games such as Valorant or Call of Duty.

This recruiting message is likely an attempt by Riot Games, which has one of the industry’s leading anti-cheat teams, to convince hackers to stop developing cheats and use their skills to make games safer and free of cheaters.

“The hope is that people who are doing it as a hobby or because they're curious might want a chance to do it as a career,” a Riot employee, who asked to remain anonymous as they weren’t allowed to talk to the press, told Motherboard. “And the people who are doing it to sell cheats for profit probably wouldn't be interested.”

For example, Riot is hiring a mobile anti-cheat engineer in Seoul, South Korea, according to the company’s hiring page.

Riot did not respond to a request for comment.

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