Starting October 6, 2026, Riot will begin proactively preventing game memory access by default for all unknown third-party applications, for all titles, including League, TFT, and VALORANT. For known and currently approved tools, we will have an extended grace period until April 2027, after which time, they will need to have switched to the official APIs.

Why is direct memory access for third-party apps being removed?

For many years, Riot left the door cracked open for third-party applications, allowing them to read from or write to game memory for extracurricular use cases, including things like trackers, overlays, or mods. However, advances in AI-assisted reverse engineering have grown the ranks of would-be hackers at an unsustainable pace, and the same door that makes these use cases possible is now being increasingly abused by bad actors to create thousands of new cheats, to spin up sophisticated bot farms, and to directly attack in-game experiences.

After careful assessment of the risk this presents to the future of Riot’s titles, we determined the only viable way to protect game integrity at this scale is to address the vulnerability at its root: by preventing memory access universally and moving all remaining 3rd party applications onto the official API as the only allowed mechanism for retrieving game data.

We want Riot’s games to last lifetimes, and while we know this will not be a popular decision by any stretch of the imagination, bringing our client security up to industry standard is the only chance we have to defend against the overwhelming abuse and instrumentation of our games by current AI models.

What does this mean for me?

For the vast majority of players, this change will not have any impact on your day-to-day experience, except for an immediate reduction in cheaters, game crashes, and eventually, accounts for sale. Many third party tools do not pilfer game memory, and for those that do, there are potential data alternatives within the official APIs.

While we don’t want to promise that any specific application will remain functional, we recognize the potential impact to players from this change, which is why we are extending a grace period until April 2027 to existing third party developers, during which time they can transition affected features to approved API mechanisms, formally request new API data in support of them, or sunset those features where no good alternatives remain. We recommend you follow updates from your app’s developer to be ready for any changes that they might make next year.

If you have an app that’s already stopped working and you believe it should be entitled to the grace period, please write to player support so we can have a look.

Will I get banned for using 3rd party tools after this update?

No. This change does not result in bans by itself—it just blocks unauthorized tools from interacting with the game client.