Valorant’s new Ranked Rollback system gives back Rank Rating (RR) lost in matches where cheaters are caught. This long-awaited feature protects your competitive progress and creates a fairer ranked experience by ensuring matches with cheaters don’t permanently hurt your rank.
What is the Valorant RR Refund System?
The Valorant RR Refund System, officially called “Ranked Rollbacks,” automatically returns RR points you lost when playing against confirmed cheaters. Coming in Season 25 Act 2, this system tackles a problem players have complained about for ages – unfair RR losses from matches with cheaters.
When Vanguard (Riot’s anti-cheat) catches someone using hacks, the system bans the cheater and gives back RR to players who lost against them. This creates a more balanced competitive environment where your rank better shows your actual skill instead of being dragged down by unfair matches.
How Does the Ranked Rollback System Work?
The Ranked Rollback system follows a straightforward process that helps honest players while punishing cheaters:
- After a match ends, if Vanguard spots a cheater, that player gets banned
- The system looks at all recent matches where the banned player competed
- Any RR lost by players who faced the cheater gets automatically refunded
- Players get a notification through an in-game “mailbox” showing names of verified cheaters they reported
It’s worth noting – that this system only works for matches where cheaters are caught after the game ends. If Vanguard catches someone mid-match, the game stops with the “CHEATER DETECTED” screen, and nobody gains or loses RR.
Who Benefits from the RR Refund System?
The Ranked Rollback system mainly helps players who’ve lost RR because of matches against cheaters. However, there are some key differences in how the system handles various situations:
- Players who lost against teams with cheaters get their RR fully refunded
- Players who randomly got matched with cheaters on their team won’t lose RR from those games
- Players who deliberately queued with cheaters face harsh penalties, possibly including bans
This approach makes sure innocent players don’t get punished for cheaters’ actions while discouraging anyone from trying to game the system by intentionally teaming up with hackers.
Why Riot Implemented the RR Refund System
Riot Games created the Ranked Rollback system after growing player frustration about cheating in competitive play. Despite Vanguard catching over 3.6 million accounts in four years, players still hated losing RR to cheaters.
The issue got really bad in early 2025 when Riot’s anti-cheat team saw a big spike in cheating. Some regions had alarming numbers between December 2024 and January 2025 – Brazil saw over 10% of ranked matches with at least one cheater.
Phillip Koskinas, who heads Riot’s Anti-Cheat team, explained that the holiday season temporarily reduced their ability to push anti-cheat updates, creating an opening that cheaters exploited. Once regular updates started again, cheating dropped below 1% globally, but the experience showed they needed better player protection.
When Will the RR Refund System Launch?
The Ranked Rollback system officially launches with Season 25 Act 2. While we don’t have the exact date yet, players can expect this feature soon, along with other updates like map pool changes and a new Battle Pass. Besides the RR refund feature, players will also get a notification system showing the names of every confirmed cheater they’ve reported, making the reporting system more transparent.
What We Think
RR system implementation is a good system to counter cheaters and mostly compensate victims of cheaters who were not detected during the match, hence losing RR points and possibly their ranks.
We have personally experienced this, and even though it’s clear the player is cheating, the cheating system Vanguard failed to detect, causing around 20RR+ losses for three players on our team. However, after almost a day, the system detected the cheater; even though we never got our RR back, so I’m all for the RR system.
Conclusion
The Valorant RR Refund System marks a big step forward in Riot’s fight against cheaters. By making sure players don’t permanently lose RR from unfair matches, the system helps maintain competitive integrity while giving you confidence that your rank better reflects your true skill. With Vanguard’s increasingly effective detection, these changes promise a fairer and more enjoyable competitive experience for all legitimate Valorant players.
A passionate gamer girl who loves playing Valorant in her free time and streams on Youtube, and Twitch. Currently she's stuck at Diamond 3-Ascendent 1 and never given up on the grind. She enjoys competitive gaming and is always looking to improve her skills. She's joined Valobuff with it's mission to increase the Valorant buffs and nerfs knowledge to contribute to the Valorant community.
