The Battlefield 6 open betas proved exceptionally popular earlier this month for many, but a significant portion of the PC playerbase were met with a daunting wall to play thanks to the game’s Secure Boot requirement. This technical hurdle is in place for the game’s anti-cheat, a kernel-level bit of software dedicated to curbing a rising cheating problem across online FPS games.
Alas, the Battlefield 6 beta still had a few cheaters running around and ruining things for their fellow players. To find out more about whether Battlefield 6’s Javalin anti-cheat was successful in the eyes of EA, Eurogamer sat down to talk to Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl. Buhl would express pride at the anti-cheat team’s work, sadness for those unable to play due to the Secure Boot requirement, and resigned to him and his peer’s fate in the endless battle against cheaters.
“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed,” Buhl beamed when asked how he felt the anti-cheat held up during the betas. “Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”
Buhl would elaborate by sharing that Battlefield 6 had two anti-cheat teams working on the game, in what he described as a “pretty massive investment” by EA. There’s the EA anti-cheat team that built the Javalin anti-cheat team, as well as the Battlefield 6 anti-cheat team that focused on “integrating EA’s technology as well as monitoring and all the other responsibilities you’d expect from an anti-cheat team”.
The reason for this expense is to ensure a “fair play experience”, which was “critical to Battlefield’s success” according to Buhl. The cost for the user is granting additional access to Battlefield Studios’ and EA’s anti-cheat, as well as enabling Secure Boot on their PC. This led to many turning away from the PC beta, something Buhl is bummed out about.
“The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot” Buhl admits. “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play: that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”
Buhl continues: “Unfortunately these are some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating. Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”
So where does this cat-and-mouse game end? Does it ever end, and will players have to get used to providing kernel-level access, enabling Secure Boot, and opening their door to other technical requirements for new games?
“The short answer is it never ends,” states Buhl. “We expect our anti-cheat team will continue working on technology, and if at some point there’s a new technological requirement that we’ll have to add that’s critical to securing the fairness of the game, we’ll do that. Or we’ll certainly evaluate that. Anti-cheat never ends, it’s a constant cat-and-mouse game. We’re never going to win. Hopefully they’re never going to win. But in the end, we want to be as safe and secure as possible.