This is the exclusive reason I don't play it. Riot went all in on their trojan-horse malware because not enough people protested it in Valorant. Now all of their games require it suddenly. Games that have been operating fine for years, suddenly require a fresh new 'anti-cheat' to curb the massive threat of players having fun wrong?

No, I reckon this is what it appears to be. Mass data-harvesting and spying.