'Man, I wish we didn't have to turn on Secure Boot': Battlefield 6 technical director knows the anti-cheat measure is a pain, but believes 'the trade off was worth it'

If you were hoping that Battlefield 6 would ease up on its Secure Boot requirement ahead of launch, I'd stop holding that breath.

Battlefield Studios has reaffirmed its requirement for the BIOS-level setting, which some fans complained was incompatible with their system or required jumping through too many hoops just to try the game.

"I'll start by saying, man, I wish we didn't have to turn on Secure Boot," Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl told PC Gamer in an interview. "I wish we could just play the game and nobody cheated. But actually, a couple of years ago, we had a lot of discussions, thought, and evaluation about where we wanted to balance making it easy for everyone to play and making it safe for everyone to play without cheaters. And we decided that the most important thing was for people to feel like they were playing in a safe and fair environment without a bunch of cheaters."

Secure Boot, for those unaware, is a security measure that verifies your system isn't compromised by malicious software (or deep-rooted cheat software) before booting. Battlefield 6 is utilizing Secure Boot in conjunction with EA Javelin, the company's kernel-level anti-cheat software that runs while the game is open, scanning for cheats with an extremely high level of access to your PC.

Javelin is already active in Battlefield 2042 and Battlefield 5, both of which require Secure Boot. It's enabled by default in modern Windows machines, but some choose to keep it off because it tends to torpedo some normal, non-malicious PC practices like dual-booting into Linux.

"Of course, we're never going to solve all cheating problems, but Secure Boot is a hugely helpful tool in tackling cheating," Buhl said.

"It sucks that there's the friction for Secure Boot. Obviously, we're doing as much as we can to educate people and provide facts and things like that, but at the end of the day, we just decided that was a trade-off that was worth it … As we look around the industry, we see that's a trend other people are heading towards as well."

Buhl was likely referring to Activision's recent announcement that Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will also require Secure Boot at launch. While aggressive anti-cheat tactics used to be associated mainly with ultra-competitive tactical shooters like Counter-Strike 2 or Valorant, now it's casual FPS franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty investing in sizable anti-cheat units and proprietary software working around the clock to counter cheat makers.

Buhl and the Javelin team are willing to hoist some inconvenience on players in the name of fairness, but considering cheaters tend to target games with strong competitive cultures the hardest, I asked Buhl if BF Studios is shoring up its anti-cheat efforts in anticipation of ranked modes in Battlefield 6.

"We are still focused on our casual modes. We're doing anti-cheat for that. We may do more competitive modes later, but that's not a driver for why we want things to be safe and secure and fair."

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