Can I get banned for using SkinPeek?
That's an excellent question! The short answer is no, you won't get banned for using SkinPeek or any other store checker. I can say that with very high certainty.
I have no way of knowing how many total SkinPeek users there are, but I would say ~150k is a conservative estimate: at its peak, Ministral (public SkinPeek instance) had 71k by itself. And yet, no one has been banned for using SkinPeek. Many, many people (including myself) have been using it daily for years with no problems whatsoever.
This is quite a long post, so TLDR at the bottom.
To be clear, Riot could easily implement a SkinPeek detection algorithm if they wanted to (their aimbot detection algorithm is already 100x more complex). But it makes no sense for them to do so, and here's why.
If you read Riot's Terms of Service, you'll see that it forbids "any third party application", which is why some people think store checkers are banned. But in my mind, that is only written in there for a few reasons:
- So that they don't get sued for banning people that use actually harmful programs (e.g. instalocking bots)
- To discourage people from going around and installing random Valorant programs all over the internet
- So that if a program dev messes up and, say, leaks everyone's passwords online, Riot can say "it's against ToS guys, not our responsibility!"
But as for actively seeking out anyone using a store checker and banning them, that doesn't make sense for them to do. They know full well these are programs written by hobby devs in their spare time for fun (no one's making money off SkinPeek). Both the users and the devs are just passionate Valorant players, it would be stupid to suddenly ban them.
Plus in the case of SkinPeek specifically, think about it: the people checking their store on their phone are often skin enthusiasts, who typically spend the most money on skins. Banning them would be outright stupid.
Let's imagine one day Riot decided they wanted people to stop using SkinPeek and other programs... well first they would just change the API and cause SkinPeek to stop working - no one uses it anymore, no ban needed. Or, back when they wanted people to stop using vRY and WAIUA, what they did was post a tweet telling people to stop using them.
And in the case of vRY and WAIUA, they were programs that let you bypass streamer mode (among other things), i.e. actively degrading other people's experience. What's the worst you can do with a shop checker bot? Buy more skins than your friends?
So Riot aren't going to ban anyone for using SkinPeek. However for full transparency, I should mention that about once a month, someone comes into the support server claiming they got perma-banned because of SkinPeek. All these people are adamant they never ever cheated, and didn't use any other programs, so it had to be SkinPeek.
Since this happened so infrequently, I always assumed it was just that their account got hacked, and the hacker used an aimbot on their account. I just told them to contact support and didn't think much more of it. That was until Mistral, the awesome guy hosting Ministral and my partner on SkinPeek development, was the next person to get the banhammer.
I know for a fact he would never even think about using a game hack, so... is SkinPeek to blame? Was it hosting it or using it that got him banned? Turns out, it was neither! After being stonewalled by Riot Support 3 times, he managed to get in touch with a Riot dev who told him it was a false positive... -_-
But relevant to this discussion was that he gave that Riot dev a list of everything he had installed on his PC that might have caused the ban, including AtlasOS, Deceive, and SkinPeek. The dev assured him that none of these programs caused the ban, and he could keep using them 👍
More info about this incident here if you're curious.
(Note: this just means it's confirmed that Vanguard doesn't detect SkinPeek as a game hack, not that it is officially allowed by Riot.)
TLDR: No one has been banned or even warned, and it makes no sense for Riot to stop you from buying more skins. A Riot dev even confirmed SkinPeek won't get you banned. So yes, it's safe to use.