Riot Shutdown the Recon Bolt Instalock App

Ever since Valorant was released, instalocking has been a nuisance and headache for the community.

While most players only wanted a speed boost to get their favorite Agent or to use one of its many other features, many others were griefing or overall creating a toxic environment in the game using this app, leading to Riot finally serving the Recon Bolt creator with a cease and desist and threatening to take him to court if he didn't disable the app and remove its Github page entirely.

Recon Bolt was an app you could get for your smartphone that would instantly select and lock your preferred Agent. Since this app did that automatically, it was always way faster than any human could be, and this shows that the community had a problem with the Agent picking system. While a lot of players argued that there should be a randomly assigned pick order like in League of Legends to prevent conflict between teammates, Riot enforced this method of selection and even went as far as to shut down the Recon Bolt app.

Long-time Valorant player "Dunskus" initially developed it as a means for players to track the progression of their rank, which was super useful when using a Valorant Elo Boost. The app changed drastically over time, enabling players to instalock agents, see the in-game shop, including which items were on sale, look at their match history, track their missions, and even change load-outs and skins. This last feature was against Riot's terms of use, but removing it was not enough; Riot demanded to have the app shut down immediately.

Dunskus shared the cease and desist letter from Riot that warned him that he would be sued if he didn't remove the Instalock app from the Recon Bolt discord group.

In his post, he claimed:

"It's hard to describe how disappointed I am that things have turned out this way, but Riot has shut down all attempts from my side to have a conversation about this and figure out a way forward together."

Riot asked that the software be made unavailable for download and removed from every App Store. But for those of you who had it downloaded already, the app is still operational for now, but it is linked to an API that will most likely go down soon.

If Riot doesn't disable the API, it might end up being like Flappy Bird, where anyone who previously had the app installed could still use it even though it wasn't available on any App Store.

Regardless of how the players feel about it, it has capabilities that are not allowed and breach the Valorant and Riot ToS.

Using third-party applications on Valorant has already led to hundreds of bans, not only for cheaters but also for people using skin changers or even apps that give you live information about the current game.

The best way to stay safe is to play the game as Riot intends players to, without any extras or overlays, and hope that, like in League of Legends, they end up boosting their HUD with a few more features and solutions inspired by the most creative players among us!

GG Boost, the Best Elo Boosting Experience!