Does Valorant — Need Secure Boot

The next morning, Alex wrote a post on that same subreddit. Not a rant, not a defense, just a question: “I enabled Secure Boot. Then I checked my logs and found an unsigned driver trying to load. Does Valorant need it? Maybe not. But do you need to know what’s actually running on your PC? Yeah. You really do.”

After an hour of YouTube tutorials and three blue screens, Alex got it working. Secure Boot: Enabled. They held their breath and launched Valorant. does valorant need secure boot

One sleepless night, Alex gave in. Not fully—just a peek. They booted into Windows, opened the BIOS with a trembling finger on the Delete key, and navigated to the Secure Boot menu. It was a graveyard of cryptic options: Standard, Custom, PK, KEK, db. It looked less like a security feature and more like an ancient ritual. The next morning, Alex wrote a post on that same subreddit

“It’s just a kernel-level anti-cheat,” Alex muttered to the empty room, scrolling through a Reddit thread titled “Riot is literally malware.” The comments were a fever dream of tech-anarchist fury. “They don’t own my PC.” “Secure Boot is a backdoor.” “Next they’ll want my fingerprint to play Spike Rush.” Alex upvoted every single one. Does Valorant need it

The first comment arrived in thirty seconds: “Nice try, Riot shill.”