Well, That Didn't Take Long: Cheaters Already Ruining Battlefield 6 Beta Despite New Security Hurdles
In news that will surprise absolutely no one who has ever played a PC shooter, the Battlefield 6 beta is already crawling with cheaters. So much for that new Secure Boot requirement.
In news that will shock absolutely no one who has ever played a competitive shooter on PC, the Battlefield 6 open beta is already crawling with cheaters. The game has been in the hands of the public for barely a day, and social media is already lighting up with clips of aimbots and wallhacks. The kicker? This is all happening despite a new, hardware-level security requirement that was supposed to be the next big step in the war against cheating.
A New Line of Defense, Already Breached
Just yesterday, EA was publishing guides on how PC players could enable Secure Boot in their BIOS to be able to play the beta. This new hurdle, which verifies that only trusted software is running on a machine, was touted as a key part of the anti-cheat effort. It's a move being mirrored by the competition, as Activision recently announced that the upcoming
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will require the exact same thing. It seems forcing players to tinker with their motherboard settings is the new industry standard for fighting cheaters.
So Much for That
Despite this new requirement and EA's own Javelin anti-cheat system, the cheaters are already running rampant. Clips of blatant hacking have gone viral, with one on Twitter racking up nearly 6 million views in a matter of hours. The clip got so much attention that DICE producer Alexia Christofi quickly responded, assuring players that the user in the video had been "already banned".
The Official Response
Facing a potential PR nightmare just as their beta hits a massive 300,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, EA issued a statement acknowledging the problem. The publisher claims its existing tech has already blocked 330,000 attempts to cheat or tamper with the anti-cheat controls. However, they also revealed the staggering scale of the problem, admitting that players had already reported 44,000 instances of cheating on day one, with another 60,000 reports coming in on the second day so far.
The Unwinnable War
Let's be realistic here. The idea that digging into our BIOS was going to be the silver bullet that ended cheating was always a long shot. While these hardware-level checks are a necessary escalation in the arms race, the truth is that cheat development is a sophisticated (and pathetic) and profitable industry. They will always find a workaround. Even VALORANT's Vanguard, arguably the most invasive and effective anti-cheat on the market, still has to contend with cheaters who manage to slip through the cracks.
So, here we are again. Publishers are making honest players jump through more and more technical hoops for a marginal security improvement, while the cheaters are already a step ahead, business as usual. The war on cheating continues, and as always, it’s the legitimate players who are caught in the crossfire.