Regular software cheats whether internal or external have pretty much always been detected for a while now. Anything public will get you scammed or banned, privates DO exist however those get picked off too or offered a C&D.
DMA has never not been a complete mess (glad I never wasted any time/money on that crap)
Colorbots and AI cheats have existed for a long time on 1 PC but that would usually get you banned if using a public driver or improperly configured arduino. Hostshield was a good workaround but mainly offered by trash resellers who have low performance cheats anyways.
The best way around this was using a private driver, which ACPD themselves stated this was by far the most difficult thing to detect. However, even with these in place using anything on your main PC still ended up in a ban since every DMA user who used to hate on AI/Color suddenly moved over and riot shifted their focus.
Makcu/Ferrum released along with a new wave of users who started utilizing dual PC solutions but it was only several months before:
-NDI was detected
-UDP was detected
-Makcu is now unsafe (not confirmed detected but you are at risk when using and will get banned during a manual review).
Streaming via a capture card is technically viable for now but comes at a significant price if you want anything that performs even remotely well combined with requiring a Ferrum as well. Both of these are of $300 (basically just a DMA setup) for something that used to be an easy workaround.
HWID spoofers have also taken a number of different beatings. It is now extremely unlikely to get yourself unbanned and almost impossible to do so without any traces or spending a large amount of money to reconfigure your physical setup. Admittedly, I managed to unban myself recently and don't have as much knowledge in this subject since I didn't get banned on VALORANT for a several year period while DMA was at its height, but I still know from many sources spoofing has only become harder and more providers have resorted to scamming, lying, removing support, etc.
In my opinion the days of the cap card/ferrum solution are numbered, and VALORANT is the only game that has an anti-cheat that is able to detect and ban users extremely quickly and even those on a setup using 2 PCs. From a technical aspect this is extremely impressive and far beyond anything I've seen from any other AC out there. Sending any video feed over your local network should not be something this easily detectable regardless of if that resolution is cropped or not.
Nothing is on the main pc, nothing is interacting with the game, nothing is being manipulated in a way that raises the suspicions of an anti-cheat as fast as it does with vanguard. Normally these kinds of doomer posts are extremely cringe and come from an uneducated perspective, typically after someone has suffered a series of bans and yet I have cheated on the game since it came out and only feel this way now.
Anyone who disagrees is welcome to prove me wrong, I'd like to see it
