Yes. Riot said cheating reports and the share of ranked VALORANT matches with a cheater rose briefly during the 2024–25 holiday code freeze, when the company could not regularly ship new updates or hotfixes. Riot attributed the increase to that release pause; the post does not independently establish cause. After detection releases resumed, Riot reported the global share of ranked matches with a cheater had fallen below 1%.
What Riot reported about the holiday spike
In a February 4, 2025 update, Phillip “mirageofpenguins” Koskinas, whom the post identifies as a data-based anti-cheater on Riot’s Vanguard team, said reports and cheater prevalence in ranked matches had increased over the preceding weeks. Riot said the spikes coincided almost exactly with its holiday code freeze. Koskinas explained: “Riot’s holiday break halts our release processes, so no new updates or hotfixes can go out to players.” Riot’s Vanguard update is the source for these claims.
The timing and Riot’s explanation point to the 2024–25 year-end break. The company’s post does not provide a complete measurement methodology or independent validation, so its causal account should be understood as Riot’s explanation rather than a separately verified finding.
How to read the reported numbers
Riot provided several figures, but they describe different measures. A match-level prevalence figure is not the same as how many suspensions Riot issued or how quickly it acted against a cheater.
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| Measure | What Riot reported | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Ranked-match prevalence, global | Below 1% of ranked games had a cheater after Riot resumed shipping detections. | A share of ranked matches, as reported by Riot in its February 4, 2025 update. It is not a current-rate guarantee. |
| Ranked-match prevalence, Brazil | Brazil briefly reached 10% of ranked games with a cheater. | A regional peak reported by Riot; the post does not provide a full method for independently reproducing it. |
| Ban velocity | Nearly seven suspensions per minute during the January 10–13 weekend. | Riot described this as its highest sustained ban velocity on record at that time. It measures enforcement activity, not the share of matches affected. |
| Time-to-action | The median cheater completed six games before action in 2024. | Riot defined this measure as the number of games a cheater can play before action and called 2024 its second-fastest year for time-to-action. |
All four figures come from Riot’s February 4, 2025 Vanguard update. They should not be combined into a single “cheater rate”: prevalence, suspensions per minute, time-to-action, and region answer different questions.
What Riot said it would do next
Koskinas said Riot was optimistic the global rate would remain below 1% for several months and that the company would try to pre-plan “surprise” updates for cheaters to contend with during future breaks. That was a plan stated in February 2025; it does not prove that a particular later holiday break had a pre-planned detection update.
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Why the late-2025 break is a separate event
Riot later announced another winter break, but its December 2025 notices do not report a second cheating spike. Patch 11.11, published December 2, 2025, was described as the final patch of that year, with the next scheduled patch after Riot’s break. In a separate December 19, 2025 company announcement, Riot said work would resume January 5 and that anti-cheat, live operations, and security would have coverage for emerging issues. That coverage statement concerns the 2025 break and should not be read as evidence about the earlier spike or as confirmation of a later one.
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