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Server-side anti-cheat can make a particular kind of wallhack much less useful by keeping hidden enemy positions off a player’s machine. But server authority alone does not do that: a server may control the accepted game state while still sending clients information they should not be able to see. Riot’s 2020 account of VALORANT’s Fog of War shows how a game can filter that information—and why doing so takes substantial engineering.
Server authority and information secrecy are different protections
A wallhack can exploit enemy positions already delivered to a client, even if the game’s normal graphics do not draw opponents through walls. If the data is on the player’s machine, a compromised client may be able to expose it. Preventing that information leak means controlling what the client receives, not just what the server accepts.
| Protection | What it does | What it does not guarantee |
|---|---|---|
| Server-authoritative networking | The server governs accepted game state instead of trusting the client’s version of the world. Riot describes VALORANT’s client/server communication as designed so “a server must never trust a client’s view of the world” in its 2020 article “Peeking into VALORANT’s Netcode.” | It does not, by itself, mean the client is denied hidden enemy positions. |
| Server-side visibility filtering | The server withholds selected enemy state until it is relevant to the player’s view. Riot’s VALORANT Fog of War account describes withholding an opponent’s location behind a wall until the opponent is about to become visible. | It does not establish protection against every cheat, information leak, or way of inferring an opponent’s location. |
The two protections can work together, but they answer different questions: who decides the game state, and what information is sent to each player?
How VALORANT’s Fog of War approach works
In Riot anti-cheat lead Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain’s April 14, 2020 engineering account, the server does not send an enemy’s position to opponents while that enemy is behind a wall. The server instead provides the relevant state as the opponent approaches visibility. This reduces the opportunity for a wallhack to reveal a position that the client should not yet know.
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Why simple line-of-sight checks were not enough
Riot’s first prototype used raycasts to test whether an opponent was visible. A ray aimed at an actor’s center can say “blocked” even when part of the actor is visible around cover, producing late visibility or an opponent who remains hidden. Riot reports that testing a target with 10 rays helped address this problem but remained fallible; in that design, it would make the check 10 times more expensive than using one ray.
Precomputing visibility with map cells
Riot’s eventual approach used server-side occlusion culling and Potentially Visible Sets (PVS). The map is divided into cells, and visibility relationships between cells are calculated in advance so the server can use quick lookups during play. The check is deliberately optimistic: if any part of one voxel can see any part of another, the lookup treats them as visible. This helps avoid hiding an opponent who is partly exposed.
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Sending state before an opponent appears
Waiting until an opponent is visibly exposed before sending their state can make them appear late because the information still has to travel across the network. Riot describes expanding actor bounds using velocity and a look-ahead interval larger than expected ping, allowing the server to send relevant information just before the opponent can appear. That reduces pop-in, but means the client may receive some information before direct visual exposure.
Why withholding information creates more work
Visibility has to be accurate enough for play
A strict visibility test risks late appearances or invisible actors; a more permissive test may send information earlier than a player can see the opponent. Map-cell preprocessing makes visibility lookups faster, but the game still has to build and maintain the visibility data and choose classifications that avoid disruptive visual results.
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Hidden actors can have stale animation and event state
When an actor is hidden, the client may not receive events needed to keep its local animation or effects current. Riot says it encountered incorrect animation and event state when actors emerged from Fog of War. Its response included Effect Containers, which could restart and fast-forward effects as an actor became visible again. This reconciliation work is part of making information filtering fit a live game, not an optional cosmetic detail.
Reported server cost was specific to Riot’s implementation
Riot reported that its optimized Fog of War system used less than 2% of server frame time, compared with 50% for its first prototype. Those are Riot’s figures for VALORANT’s 2020 implementation, not independently audited measurements or a general estimate for other games. Different maps, engines, networking designs, and visibility requirements can change the cost.
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What server-side anti-cheat cannot establish on its own
- It cannot make all wallhacks impossible in every game. Withholding enemy coordinates can blunt cheats that depend on receiving those coordinates, but other leaks or signals may still reveal information.
- It does not cover every cheating method. Audio and ability cues, other information leaks, and external observation are outside what this visibility mechanism alone demonstrates.
- It does not prove that a game is cheat-free. Riot’s published implementation explains a way to reduce one information channel; it is not evidence that all cheating has been eliminated.
- It is not a universal performance recipe. Riot’s reported timing and server-frame figures describe one game’s engineering work, not an industry-wide benchmark.
Riot’s account is a concrete implementation example, not a controlled comparison of anti-cheat architectures. The sources cited here do not establish an independently verified effectiveness rate or a general figure for how often wallhacks succeed.
What to look for when evaluating a game’s approach
The useful question is not simply whether a game is “server-side.” It is whether the server limits the information a client receives, how the game handles the delay between visibility and network delivery, and what happens to an actor’s state when it becomes visible again. Those choices involve security, responsiveness, server cost, and integration with the game’s maps and engine.
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