The five anti-cheats you'll actually run into — EAC, BattlEye, Vanguard, RICOCHET, and ACE — all sit in the kernel and all issue hardware bans, but they differ in ways worth knowing before you install one. Some run only while you play; one runs from the moment Windows boots. Some share bans across dozens of games; others are tied to a single publisher. This is the practical comparison.
If you want to know which anti-cheat is watching, when it's active, and how its bans behave, here's the side-by-side.
Quick reference: the five compared
| Anti-cheat | When it runs | Notable games | Ban note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy Anti-Cheat | With the game | Fortnite, Apex, Rust, ARC Raiders | Cross-game ban sharing |
| BattlEye | With the game | PUBG, R6, Tarkov, DayZ | Global bans permanent |
| Vanguard | Boot-time, always-on | Valorant, League | Requires TPM + Secure Boot |
| RICOCHET | With the game | Call of Duty, Warzone | Cloud attestation in Ranked |
| ACE | With the game | Delta Force, Arena Breakout | Reported to linger after close |
What they share
All five are kernel-level drivers, which is what lets them read the firmware-bound identifiers behind a hardware fingerprint — motherboard serial, SMBIOS, disk, MAC — and issue a HWID ban that follows your machine rather than your account. All of them also blend behavioral detection with classic signature scanning. The differences are in footprint, scope, and requirements.
EAC and BattlEye: the session-based workhorses
Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye are the two most widely deployed, and both follow the same lifecycle: they load when the game launches and unload when it closes, so they aren't monitoring your PC between sessions. EAC's defining trait is cross-game ban sharing — a hardware ban in one EAC title can lock you out of others, which we cover in does an EAC ban affect other games. BattlEye's is bluntness: global bans are permanent with no exceptions. See our BattlEye explainer and EAC explainer for the deep dives.
Vanguard: the always-on outlier
Vanguard is the one that behaves differently. It loads at Windows boot and runs continuously, and it requires TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot to play at all. That always-on footprint is why it draws the most privacy scrutiny — the difference is laid out in which anti-cheats run 24/7 versus only when you play. Our Vanguard deep dive covers how early and deep it loads.
RICOCHET and ACE: the newer escalations
RICOCHET (Call of Duty) pushes hardest on verification — beyond kernel monitoring, it now uses cloud attestation to confirm your TPM and Secure Boot through Microsoft's servers before ranked play. ACE (Tencent's Anti-Cheat Expert) is spreading west through Delta Force and Arena Breakout; it doesn't load at boot like Vanguard, but it's been reported to keep running after you close or uninstall the game, which is its own concern. We break those down in Ricochet and ACE.
FAQ
Which anti-cheat is the most invasive?
By footprint, Vanguard — it's boot-time and always-on. ACE draws criticism for lingering after the game closes. The others are session-based.
Do all of them issue HWID bans?
Yes. All five are kernel-level and can fingerprint your hardware to issue a ban that follows your machine.
Which one shares bans across games?
EAC is known for cross-game ban sharing; a ban in one EAC title can affect others.
Can a tool remove any of these bans?
No honest tool promises that. User-mode software changes Windows identifiers, not the firmware values these kernel anti-cheats anchor to.
The takeaway
The five major anti-cheats are more alike than different at the core — kernel-level, hardware-fingerprinting, HWID-banning — but the practical distinctions matter: BattlEye and EAC stay session-bound, Vanguard is always-on and TPM-gated, RICOCHET adds cloud attestation, and ACE tends to overstay its welcome. Know which one a game uses before you install, because you're agreeing to its footprint, not just its rules.