After Valve’s recent announcement regarding the problem with AMD Anti-Lag+ resulting in players from being VAC Banned on Counter-Strike 2 with the anti-lag tech interfering with DLL files, additional gamers have expressed discomfort with their personal encounters with the software as it seems that the issue of game bans is much more prevalent than originally thought.
In response to the issue with Counter-Strike 2, AMD has advised players to avoid using their technology until a resolution is available. The company has not clarified whether Anti-Lag+ is compatible with other competitive games, but it is evident that enabling this technology may result in unforeseen complications and at worse a potential game ban.
Users have been reporting game crashes in titles such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 when utilizing Radeon RX 7000 series graphics cards with Anti-Lag+.
The prevailing workaround is to disable Anti-Lag+ in the AMD Adrenalin Software. It is important to note that this issue is not recent, as users have been reporting it for the past three weeks. AMD employees have acknowledged the problem and are currently investigating.
I believe that AMD should consider rebranding Anti-Lag+ at this point, with such vast reputational damage done to the software simply due to Counter-Strike 2 VAC bans alone warrants such action to be taken, especially now that it apparently has gotten far worse with players apparently getting banned on Apex Legends due to using Anti-Lag+.
Anti-Lag+ clearly holds a “competitive advantage” other players who don’t utilize some form of the latency reducing solution, given how it gets detected as a game cheat equivalent, the only usable name for such a software would be Insta-Ban+.
While NVIDIA’s Reflex technology is extensively utilized in numerous competitive online games, it functions differently compared to AMD Anti-Lag. Unlike Anti-Lag, NVIDIA Reflex is not integrated at a driver level. Instead, it is provided as an SDK that must be independently incorporated into games by developers themselves.
AMD took an approach to deliver a simplified solution at the driver level, allowing the usage of Anti-Lag across a near infinite amount of games to varying degrees of success, but it appears that this approach does not mesh with certain games, resulting in compatibility issues and unauthorized modifications to DLL files.
This variance in implementation might explain why NVIDIA Reflex, which operates differently, remains unaffected by similar problems encountered by AMD Anti-Lag+.
It is recommended to proceed with caution when utilizing AMD Anti-Lag+ in online games, particularly until AMD provides official confirmation of support. Even with the example of Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends, it may not be advisable to immediately enable Anti-Lag+ after it is added to the drivers, the positive takeaway is that Anti-Lag+ functions only on the latest Radeon RX 7000 series, so gamers with older hardware should not experience any problems or bans as a result.
