Warlander, the new MOBA game with hack and slash twist that was recently released on Steam as free-to-play, has quickly gained a large player base thanks to its simple yet beautiful game play. However, players have recently raised concerns about the game’s anti-cheat program, Sentry Anti-Cheat, which is made by a Japanese company (sentry.co.jp).
According to players, the Sentry Anti-Cheat program continues to run on their computer even when the game is already closed. Making some players to speculate that the program is potentially doing something malicious on the background. Some also mentioned that the program also run on start-up, and it keeps sending a packet of data back to the Japanese company.
These concerns have caused some players to question the safety of the anti-cheat program and raised speculations about the Sentry Anti-Cheat’s true purpose. This is not the first time that concerns like this have been raised, similar cases were seen with Riot’s Vanguard, which is also a kernel based anti-cheat program.
Isolated case and must be Reported
A representative from Warlander posted in the Steam forum that they have already fixed this problem and it was occurring during their early beta tests. The anti-cheat program should automatically close when it closes the game and should not start up again when your computer is restarted.
While it seems that this problem is isolated, affecting only a small number of players, the developers have urged players encountering this problem to report the issue.
Should you worry about playing Warlander?
The answer is no, contrary to initial speculation, it appears that these concerns are isolated and have been reported and addressed multiple times during the game’s early beta phase. It’s worth noting that the behavior of anti-cheat programs, such as Sentry Anti-Cheat, is not uncommon and is in place to effectively root out cheaters from the game environment.
In an effort to determine if the problem is truly isolated, we conducted a test by running Warlander on a newly installed operating system (Windows 11) and reproducing the same steps that led to the issue. So far, after closing the game, the anti-cheat engine closes on its own and disappears from the system tray. The same thing happens when uninstalling it: it also removes the anti-cheat folder from Program Files. However, there are still traces of text values in the registry that are not suspicious and common for uninstalled program.
You may also read the data they collected through their EULA (https://www.sentry.co.jp/sac/eula) and Privacy Policy (https://www.sentry.co.jp/privacy).
How to Remove Sentry Anti-Cheat Program?
If you are experiencing the “Sentry Anti-Cheat Program didn’t close or run on start-up” bug, there are steps you can take to fix it. Thanks to some helpful Reddit users on posting these tips:
First, you have to uninstall the Warlander from Steam.
If the Sentry Anti-Cheat Program folder is not deleted (C:\Program Files\SentryAntiCheat), you have run this command from CMD as Administrator (Make sure to replace the C with the drive you installed the Warlander): C:\Program Files\SentryAntiCheat\setray.exe –unins2
Finally, removed it from registry (regedit), you can check it at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\SentryAntiCheat