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A complete breakdown of how Riot's hardware bans work, how long they last, and what your real options are — pieced together from Riot's official support docs and community reporting.
A Valorant shadow ban is one of the most frustrating experiences in competitive gaming because Riot never tells you it's happening. There's no popup, no email, no notification in your client. You're just quietly moved into a different matchmaking pool where the game becomes borderline unplayable. And the worst part? Most players don't even realize what's going on until they've suffered through days or even weeks of miserable games.
You just got hit with a VAL 5 error in Valorant and you're staring at your screen wondering if you've been banned. Let's cut straight to it.
You made a new Riot account, launched League of Legends, and before you even finished champion select in your first bot game, you saw that ban notification. Your hardware is flagged. Not just your account — your entire PC. That's a Vanguard HWID ban, and it's one of the most aggressive hardware bans in competitive gaming.
VAN 152 is a Riot Vanguard hardware ID ban on your PC, not a bug. Reinstalling will not clear it. What it means, how long it lasts, and your two options.
I've spent years deep in this ecosystem, scouring official Riot support pages, Reddit threads, Discord communities, and player forums. What I've compiled here is the most comprehensive tier list of every known reason Vanguard bans players, ranked by severity and likelihood.
Some tools claim to "permanently change" your hardware IDs. Others talk about "temporary emulation." Which one do you actually need? And more importantly, which one actually works against Vanguard?
Let's break down how Valorant's ban system actually works, what makes Vanguard different from every other anti-cheat you've dealt with, and what you need to know before you waste time on methods that haven't worked since 2023.
Vanguard is a kernel-level anti-cheat that loads before you even reach your desktop — and it doesn't care whether a modification is cosmetic or competitive. So what actually happens if you run a skin changer on Valorant? We break down how Vanguard detects skin changers, what types of bans Riot enforces, and what your options are if you've already been caught.