Games giant Electronic Arts launched an open beta over the weekend for its upcoming first-person shooter Battlefield 6. Almost immediately, the game was swamped with cheaters. Soon after the launch, countless players complained online about encountering cheaters in the game.
In response, a member of Electronic Arts’ anti-cheat team, known as AC, wrote in an official forum that the company saw players report 104,000 instances of potential cheating in the first two days. The team also blocked 330,000 attempts to cheat or tamper with anti-cheat controls.
Like many modern video games, such as Valorant, Electronic Arts uses a kernel-level anti-cheat system called Javelin. This system has the highest privileges on a computer, allowing it to monitor all activity in an effort to detect cheats, which often run in the background disguised as legitimate programs.
In their post, AC acknowledged that the system is not foolproof. They also mentioned that the game enforces Secure Boot, a Windows hardware-based security feature. AC clarified that Secure Boot is not a complete solution but rather an additional barrier to make cheat development harder and detection easier.
AC emphasized that anti-cheat efforts are an ongoing battle, stating that methods that worked in the past or in other games may not always be effective in new releases.
An Electronic Arts spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company has no updated information on the number of banned players.
Cheaters and game hackers remain a persistent issue for online games. Other companies, such as Riot Games (makers of Valorant) and Activision (creators of Call of Duty), have also implemented kernel-level anti-cheat systems.
Philippe Koskinas, Riot Games’ director and head of anti-cheat, explained earlier this year that their approach includes banning cheaters, leveraging Windows security features, fingerprinting hardware to prevent repeat offenders, and even infiltrating cheat communities on platforms like Discord and Telegram.