Battlefield 6's Javelin anti-cheat stopped over 580,000 cheating attempts over the course of just one month

Battlefield 6 beta week 2: A close-up shot of masculine soldier wearing a helmet looking up and gritting his teeth.

(Image credit: EA)

It looks like Battlefield 6's Javelin anti-cheat has been working overtime, identifying and smiting cheaters before they can muck up your games. It worked so hard, in fact, that it managed to identify hundreds of thousands of cheating instances over December.

In an anti-cheats metrics report, Battlefield Studios revealed that teams have been working diligently to improve Javelin and transparency with the player base: "A lot of the conversation lacks reliable information, and sharing one large update every season isn't enough to properly inform players. To address that, we're going to be regularly updating you with a breakdown of recent anti-cheat metrics and what they mean."

Battlefield 6 California Resistance update — (Image credit: EA)

So with this in mind, Battlefield Studios shared only what happened over the course of December. One of the major metrics it uses is the Match Infection Rate (MIR): "The percentage of matches across the title that were negatively impacted by at least one cheater. This includes all suspected cheaters, even those we might not have enough evidence against."

In December, the MIR started at 2.532%. It then declined throughout the months to 2.025% before rising to 3.090% near the holiday period. For comparison, the MIR only peaked at 2.580% over the course of October to November, so there was a little more activity. 'Tis the season, I guess.

Despite the increase in nefarious activity, Javelin reportedly managed to prevent 580,389 attempts to "cheat or tamper with the game before they could impact matches," a rather successful stint.

Battlefield 6 anti-cheat metric report — (Image credit: EA)

"We also tracked 224 cheat-related programs, hardware solutions, vendors, resellers, and their associated communities," the blog post explains. "Of those, 206 of them (91.2%) publicly reported feature failures, detection notices, downtime, or fully took their cheats offline.

"We're now moving into the new year with continued focus on detection, prevention, and enforcement. You can expect our next update covering January's metrics in roughly a month's time, with more detail to help keep you informed. Keep it fair out there."

It's nice to know that, at the very least, Javelin is working as intended, as players pay the price of a Kernel-level anticheat. A software that's so aggressive it won't even play nice with Riot's anti-cheat Vanguard, and engages in a turf war that ends up with players unable to launch Battlefield 6 if Vanguard is running in the background.

Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.

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