Tuesday, August 5th 2025
No Secure Boot? No Battlefield 6 — EA Faces Backlash
As part of our ongoing commitment to Positive Play in Battlefield, Secure Boot is a requirement to play Battlefield 6 on PC. This supports the need for enhanced security while playing and utilizing new anti-cheat features in Battlefield. As cheat developers continue to evolve their tactics, we're stepping up our game too.
Requiring Secure Boot provides us with features that we can leverage against cheats that attempt to infiltrate during the Windows boot process. It also lets the Battlefield Positive Play team use its own features and related dependent security features like TPM to combat other forms of cheating, the most relevant of which include:
Any attempt to access Battlefield 6 without Secure Boot enabled will result in a prompt indicating its necessity.
Secure Boot is available for Windows 11 and Windows 10 devices. For more information on enabling this feature, refer to this EA Help article.
In addition to utilizing Secure Boot to help us, our Anticheat system, EA Javelin Anticheat, is customizable and offers a unique and modified approach for Battlefield and other EA FPS games. Javelin has been built from the ground up by a team of veteran engineers and analysts who were specifically hired to focus on cheating problems for each game under EA's umbrella and design unique features to address those issues. They work alongside our Battlefield Positive Play team to refine the data, insight, and tools necessary to ensure equitable play for all our players across our Battlefield Studios titles.
Source:
Electronic Arts
Requiring Secure Boot provides us with features that we can leverage against cheats that attempt to infiltrate during the Windows boot process. It also lets the Battlefield Positive Play team use its own features and related dependent security features like TPM to combat other forms of cheating, the most relevant of which include:
- Kernel-Level Cheats and Rootkits
- Memory Manipulation and Injection
- Spoofing and Hardware ID Manipulation
- Virtual Machines and Emulation
- Tampering with Anti-Cheat Systems
Secure Boot is available for Windows 11 and Windows 10 devices. For more information on enabling this feature, refer to this EA Help article.
In addition to utilizing Secure Boot to help us, our Anticheat system, EA Javelin Anticheat, is customizable and offers a unique and modified approach for Battlefield and other EA FPS games. Javelin has been built from the ground up by a team of veteran engineers and analysts who were specifically hired to focus on cheating problems for each game under EA's umbrella and design unique features to address those issues. They work alongside our Battlefield Positive Play team to refine the data, insight, and tools necessary to ensure equitable play for all our players across our Battlefield Studios titles.
103 Comments on No Secure Boot? No Battlefield 6 — EA Faces Backlash
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Greetings, Fred.
... what exactly are they doing there that benefits from secure boot? Do they have signed kernel modules that the TPM would stop when tampered with? I don't think that would currently work.
TPM has no relation here aside from being a base requirement of Windows11 - it's just a very small block of specialized data storage, afterall.
EA claims to have blocked over 300,000 attempts but they received 60,000 reports from players on the first day of the beta, and another 40,000 reports on the second day. If people are so determined to cheat in the beta, it's only going to get worse when the game launches, and it's unfortunate too since BF6 seemed promising, if only they would have server sided detection and allow for custom server renting.
gamerant.com/battlefield-6-cheaters-blocked-open-beta-javalin/
I do agree that EA has no business doing this level of invasive anticheat, but I don't like it because IMO no gaming company has any business having that depth of system access, not because they're forcing me to turn on SB and TPM (that I already have enabled anyways).
There are ways to bypass that of course, but the aim of any anticheat is not to completely block all cheating, but rather to block enough of it that it's not a problem - hence the endless attempts to raise the bar for effective cheats.
I am really surprised about translation, though.
Anyway BF6 is mid and I’ve disabled it again.🤣
That’ll not solve the cheating problem at all but at least the backlash from users that lacked the hardware/skill/will to have them turned on.
I feel steam needs to display whether a game includes kernel code on its store page.
At no point does EA claim to be countering rootkits, MS and Linux vendors who care about security do, and they're not wrong to do either - it's just one layer of defense amongst many.
To me thats a root kit.
If it became an optional installation feature of the game, also made clear in the game's details on launchers before installation, I am happy to change my opinion.