- Users on the EA forums have expressed frustration regarding cheaters in Battlefield 6
- EA’s Javelin anti-cheat is supposed to prevent cheating at the cost of Linux compatibility
- Kernel-level anti-cheat systems may be doing more harm than good for players
EA Battlefield 6 has maintained significantly high player numbers since its launch on October 10 and has continued to grow with the addition of its Battle Royale mode. Redsec. However, some players may have noticed worrying behavior from other users while in the game.
According to users on the EA forums, numerous Battlefield 6 Players have not been caught for cheating despite the EA Javelin anti-cheat system, created to prevent tools like aimbot or improved aim assists. While EA has permanently banned players seen using Cronus Zen (one of the aiming assist tools), it hasn’t stopped users from finding ways to cheat.
I can attest to the claims made on the EA forums here and those found on another Steam community forum, as I have detected cheaters on several Battlefield 6 lobby that uses soft aimbot or cheat trainers that grant perks like infinite grenades or no weapon recoil, and if that wasn’t enough evidence, many users would brag about it in text chat.
Cheating attempts were frequent in the beta, and EA claimed that it detected and successfully prevented 330,000 attempts to “cheat or tamper with anti-cheat controls,” but that didn’t stop some from circumventing the system.
These attempts are still happening, and many are succeeding, which raises the question of whether the Javelin anti-cheat system is more of a punishment for genuine players or a benefit to stopping cheating.
One of the biggest problems is that EA’s Javelin kernel-level anti-cheat requires secure boot to be enabled, which can cause complications with dual-boot desktop setups (which involves registering new secure boot keys). Since EA will not adapt its anti-cheat to work on Linux, SteamOS users will not be able to play Battlefield 6.
Given that cheaters are still active, this kernel-level anti-cheat seems like an extreme and unnecessary measure to prevent cheating, and one that is curbing a potential increase in the count of Linux players in the queue. Anyway, anti-cheat itself doesn’t exactly cover all your bases.
It’s worth mentioning that in addition to SteamOS support, kernel-level anti-cheat introduces significant security risks; They require access to Ring 0, the core aspect of an operating system, and if bypassed can lead to all kinds of nasty breaches and attacks that no one wants.
Similar criticism from gamers applies to Activision’s Ricochet anti-cheat system for Obligationswhich is a franchise that possibly has it much worse than Battlefield in terms of cheaters (especially for more recent iterations).
Perhaps what publishers like EA and Activision need to accept is that there is essentially no way to completely stop cheaters in multiplayer games, so kernel-level anti-cheat probably isn’t the way to go. There are alternative measures involving account verifications via mobile numbers (which some may not like) or server-level anti-cheat systems that are much less problematic than those active on Battlefield 6 and Obligations. We hope that such alternatives can be considered in the future.
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