Electronic Arts’ much-anticipated Battlefield 6 open beta was overrun with cheaters within days of its weekend launch. Players flooded forums with complaints, prompting EA’s anti-cheat team to reveal that over the first two days, they logged 104,000 suspected cheating incidents and blocked 330,000 attempts to bypass anti-cheat controls.
Battlefield 6 uses Javelin, a kernel-level anti-cheat system similar to those in games like Valorant, granting it deep system access to detect hidden cheats. It also enforces Windows’ Secure Boot feature, though EA’s anti-cheat lead acknowledged these tools aren’t foolproof.
“Anti-Cheat isn’t one and done, it’s an ever-evolving battlefield,” the team wrote, adding that every game requires different countermeasures. Despite the measures, EA has not disclosed how many cheaters have been permanently banned.
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The cheating challenge is not unique to EA, other major studios like Riot Games and Activision also battle hackers through kernel-level defenses, hardware fingerprinting, and infiltrating cheat networks to shut down operations.