AMD’s anti-lag+ feature is wreaking havoc for Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty players
What you need to know
AMD's Anti-Lag+ is causing bans for CS 2, Apex, and game crashes in Call of Duty.
It only affects Radeon RX 7000 series GPU's.
AMD tells users to disable the feature until they can push an update.
Valve plans to unban users once AMD resolves the issue.
Gamers beware, AMD's latest update could cause you to lose years' worth of progress, in-game DLC, and rare skins.
The official Counter-Strike 2 X.com account posted that due to the new Anti-Lag+ update changing the game code it will result in a "Vac Ban." They promise in the post that "once AMD ships an update, we can do the work of identifying affected users and reversing their ban." This was the first confirmation gamers had that there was an issue with the new update by AMD which has led to more posts that cite the Anti-Lag+ feature by AMD causing issues in game. There are several other posts about the issue, such as this one on Steam.
AMD responded, telling gamers to stop using the Anti-Lag+ feature in Counter-Strike 2 until the issue can be resolved, but it would be smart to disable it in any game with anti-cheat software.
Enhance your esports experience by delivering fast click-to-response times with AMD Radeon Anti-Lag technology enabled. Take Anti-Lag to the next level with the all-new AMD Radeon Anti-Lag+, a feature that improves responsive gaming by introducing Anti-Lag on a per-game profile basis.
The software works to reduce latency through modifications to the game code. It's really more of a low latency feature to lower click to response times than anti-lag since lag is normally referring to internet latency and not hardware latency.
Call of Duty and Warzone players have started to report some issues as well, such as Modern Warfare 2 crashing, and Warzone 2 crashing with the Anti-Lag+ feature enabled. Apex Legends players are also reporting their accounts are being banned for no apparent reason, or even when the player hasn't played the game in months.
It's possible these bans in Apex were happening for other reasons, but for the Call of Duty crashing issue, the users were able to troubleshoot and determine that disabling the Anti-Lag+ feature resolved the issue.
Per Videocardz.com, these issues seem to be caused due to the driver level implementation of the Anti-Lag+ feature that is actually changing the DLL files for the programs causing the Anti-Cheat programs to trigger a violation or to crash the game. These issues don't affect NVIDIA Reflex though which is NVIDIA's counterpart to AMD's Anti-Lag+. The gamer sentiment online seems to be that these game companies and AMD should be able to resolve the situation and not ban actual reputable users. Game companies could then spend their energy focusing on people actually cheating in games.
The silver lining is that Anti-Lag+ only works on Radeon RX 7000 series devices and so anybody running older tech should be good to update and keep playing. Looking to upgrade to the Radeon RX 7000 series? Here is where you can find the 7900 XT and XTX cards. Hopefully, Valve and EA can unban any of the affected accounts but in the meantime spread the word so your friends don't lose all of those legendary Counter-Strike skins.
Have you been affected by the Anti-Lag+ issue? What do you think these companies should do to prevent unfair bans in the future? Let us know in the comments.
