As Masters: Berlin kicks off in full force, advertisements for Valorant hacks are spreading across content relating to the game on YouTube.
Kicking off on September 10, Masters: Berlin has brought more eyes to the world of Valorant, with 15 of the best teams traveling to Germany to compete for a ticket to Valorant Champions.
While Masters: Berlin is going at full force with livestreams on YouTube and Twitch, advertisements promoting Valorant hacks are also running rampant across YouTube content relating to the game, which couldn’t be more perfect timing.
Valorant’s viewership will undoubtedly be inflated during the international event, meaning the recent advertisements promoting the hacks viewability will be higher.
The ads are generally played on content related to Valorant, or to users who watch Valorant content frequently, and show off a variety of different hacks, but the main selling point being wallhacks.
Riot’s takes a zero-tolerance approach to cheating, to extreme lengths to prevent cheating in matches with the Vanguard anti-cheat.
According to Spanish Valorant creator, BlackEspanolito, Riot is aware of the cheating advertisements.
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I talked to Riot about it months ago and idk why is such a problem ban this kind of advertaisment
— KOI Black (@BlackEspanolito) September 11, 2021
In order to play Valorant, players are required to install Riot’s anti-cheat, Vanguard, which actively scans game files for any changes.
Ads for hacks aren’t exactly uncommon across YouTube either. Apex Legends has also had lots of cheat websites use YouTube as an advertising platform. CS:GO too, in late 2020, wallhacking ads were placed across all types of Counter-Strike content.
Google’s ad policy strictly forbids these kinds of ads, under rules about “enabling dishonest behavior,” which specifically lists “hacking services” as one of the prohibited ad content examples.
While Valorant’s viewership is at a high, action is needed to be taken quickly.