In August, Electronic Arts (EA) announced that players in the Battlefield 6 open beta on PC would need to enable Secure Boot in Windows and BIOS settings. The decision sparked debate and criticism, as many were unwilling to grant EA’s anti-cheat tools access to the system kernel.
Announcing this ahead of the open beta, EA explained that enabling Secure Boot provides the company with the necessary capabilities to use against cheats that “attempt to inject themselves during Windows boot.”
The company explained that access to the Trusted Platform Module via Secure Boot gives developers the ability to detect things like kernel-level cheats and rootkits, memory manipulation, spoofing and code injection, hardware ID tampering, the use of virtual machines, and attempts to interfere with anti-cheat mechanisms.
Ultimately, Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl apologized to players in an interview with Eurogamer and explained that this requirement is a necessary evil in the fight against cheaters.
“Honestly, I wish we didn’t have to use things like Secure Boot,” Bull said. “It really prevents some people from playing. Some computers can’t handle it, and they can’t play — it’s really awful. I’d like everyone to be able to play the game without issues, so we wouldn’t have to do things like this.”
At the same time, in an interview Buhl acknowledged that in the long term, even the use of Secure Boot will not completely eradicate cheating in Battlefield 6. However, according to him, the Javelin anti-cheat tools, which rely on low-level access to Secure Boot and the system kernel, are still “some of the most powerful tools in the arsenal for combating cheaters.”
After the Battlefield 6 open beta launched, EA reported that the Javelin anti-cheat system had “prevented 330,000 attempts at cheating and tampering with the anti-cheat” in less than two days.
At the same time, the developers stated that using in-game tools, players reported 104,000 cases of “potential cheating.” According to the company, these reports may “lead to the development of new cheat detection methods and help prevent their impact on gameplay.”
“The fight against cheaters never ends,” Bul said in an interview. “It’s a constant game of cat and mouse. We will never win. But hopefully they won’t either. In the end, we strive to ensure maximum security and reliability for players.”