Some gamers are angry that Battlefield 6 is likely going to require Secure Boot but most shouldn't have any issues at all

Battlefield 6 is seeming pretty close to fully brewed, judging by recent stirrings, but if you're a bit of a techy tinkerer you might be disappointed to hear that it seems the game will require you have Secure Boot enabled to play.

As brought to my attention by an X post from Pirat_Nation, an EA rep on the Battlefield Discord server responded to the question, "Will battlefield 6 have the same secure boot s***" with, "Yes, we're currently running Secure Boot for Battlefield Labs."

Battlefield Labs is the name for the paytest they've got going on, where "a select number of fans will step inside the war room" to test out the upcoming game, so presumably if the Secure Boot requirement is in play in said "war room", it'll more than likely be in the full game, too.

I say you "might" be disappointed to hear this because if you're like me you're keeping that enabled anyway. In fact, I was a little surprised to see just how much backlash this requirement seems to be getting online. I know it's EA we're talking about and they're pretty easy to dunk on, but I figured most people are fine running Secure Boot these days.

To be clear, this isn't a new requirement, either. Battlefield 2042 has the same requirement, which the company explains on Discord "supports the need for enhanced security while playing and utilizing new anti-cheat features in Battlefield."

EA continues: "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."

It's not just Battlefield that has the requirement, either, as other games such as Valorant require Secure Boot to be enabled. Valorant did kick up some backlash for its deep-seated anti-cheat around its launch, though, so it's not as if the dislike for such arguably intrusive requirements is new.

Secure Boot, for those who aren't aware, verifies everything in your system is in order and not compromised prior to the operating system booting up. It does this by checking digital signatures of each of your components' software as it loads. It also tries to ensure your underlying operating system (ie, the kernel, ring 0) isn't compromised.

I've always kept Secure Boot enabled, but I do see that there are reasons why some might want it disabled. Primarily, having it enabled prevents you from using some Linux operating systems (which you might be dual booting), as not all Linux distros support it.

There's also the fact that older motherboards don't support Secure Boot, but those are so old now that I doubt anyone trying to run Battlefield 6 will be affected.

So, perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see the big issue. Keep secure boot on. I guess if you're dual-booting a non-Secure Boot-compatible Linux distro or something then you're out of luck. Though Linux, and by extension Steam Deck, have run up against a brick wall in some games for lack of supporting some anti-cheat software, including Fortnite, so that's somewhat expected for large multiplayer games. For everyone else, just keep that setting toggled on in your UEFI. You should be able to play Battlefield 6 just fine.

We should see what the devs have been cooking up for us and testing in those Labs very soon, too, as the reveal trailer is set to launch tomorrow.

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