This is the exact opposite of consent. People are being forced to install the anti-cheat software. While you may personally find it acceptable, you do not have the authority to consent on behalf of all other players, therefore it is not consent but simply an opinion.
Installing the anti-cheat software on your own computer will provide you absolutely no benefits. It needs to be installed on the cheaters' computers for it to be effective. Obviously if there was actual consent involved and people were allowed to not install the anti-cheat software, then cheaters would simply not install it.
There are plenty of valid reasons to be concerned about this, even for people who have no intention of cheating at all. While you may trust Riot, others may not. Even if Riot won't do anything nefarious with it, all software has bugs. It's only a matter of time until someone finds a vulnerability in Riot's anti-cheat software and actual malicious actors start to exploit it.
I hate cheaters as much as anyone else, but an anti-cheat program running with kernel-level privileges is simply a ticking time bomb and should never have been approved by Microsoft. But of course, it's easy for gaming companies to brainwash the masses who have no awareness of security and privacy risks with "you don't want cheaters in your games, do you?" These are the same people who get brainwashed by arguments like "if you're not doing anything illegal you have nothing to hide, therefore you should have no issue with your communications being surveilled 24/7 because it will help reduce terrorism".
> you do not have the authority to consent on behalf of all other players,
I don't, I'm not forcing anyone to play League of Legends at gunpoint and I don't force them to install anything on their machines. If you don't trust Riot there's a simple solution, don't install their software on your computer.
The basis of consent isn't that Microsoft gets to dictate security standards to both users and third parties, it's you getting to decide what you run on your own machine.
>But of course, it's easy for gaming companies to brainwash the masses who have no awareness of security and privacy risks
This securocrat mindset is the exact problem. To you every user who makes choices that you don't approve of is part of the mindless and brainwashed masses, and you'd prefer if an operating system owner gets to dictate conditions to everyone else likely because they align with your own. That is the opposite of user freedom and it is paternalistic. It's extremely ironic you don't realize that you want Microsoft to act like a sort of discount nanny state that interfers in every decision between users and third parties because you're afraid of security threats. In this analogy you have chosen, you are the guy who smells sinister plots on every corner and wants to move control from the user to the operating system manufacturer. It is the same walled garden bs that Apple forces on everyone.
Installing the anti-cheat software on your own computer will provide you absolutely no benefits. It needs to be installed on the cheaters' computers for it to be effective. Obviously if there was actual consent involved and people were allowed to not install the anti-cheat software, then cheaters would simply not install it.
There are plenty of valid reasons to be concerned about this, even for people who have no intention of cheating at all. While you may trust Riot, others may not. Even if Riot won't do anything nefarious with it, all software has bugs. It's only a matter of time until someone finds a vulnerability in Riot's anti-cheat software and actual malicious actors start to exploit it.
I hate cheaters as much as anyone else, but an anti-cheat program running with kernel-level privileges is simply a ticking time bomb and should never have been approved by Microsoft. But of course, it's easy for gaming companies to brainwash the masses who have no awareness of security and privacy risks with "you don't want cheaters in your games, do you?" These are the same people who get brainwashed by arguments like "if you're not doing anything illegal you have nothing to hide, therefore you should have no issue with your communications being surveilled 24/7 because it will help reduce terrorism".