Battlefield 6 Beta: Electronic Arts blocks over 300,000 cheating attempts

Battlefield 6

Electronic Arts (EA) faced a significant surge of cheating attempts immediately after launching the open beta for Battlefield 6 over the weekend. Within the first two days, players reported 104,000 potential cheating incidents, and EA’s anti-cheat team successfully blocked 330,000 attempts to bypass or interfere with anti-cheat protections, according to a report by TechCrunch.

EA employs a kernel-level anti-cheat system named Javelin, similar to those used by other games such as Valorant. Running with the highest privileges on the player’s computer, Javelin monitors system activity to detect cheats, which often operate covertly in the background disguised as legitimate software.

Despite these precautions, EA acknowledges that no system can completely eliminate cheating. The company also enforces Secure Boot, a Windows hardware security feature designed to increase the difficulty for cheat developers. However, Secure Boot is not a definitive solution but rather an additional obstacle to deter cheating.

The anti-cheat team emphasised that combating cheating is an ongoing challenge. What works for one game or at one time may not be effective in another context, requiring constant evolution of detection and prevention methods.

While EA has not provided updated figures on the number of player bans, the issue of cheating remains widespread across online games. Major developers like Riot Games and Activision have also adopted kernel-level anti-cheat technologies to protect game integrity.

Phillip Koskinas, director and head of anti-cheat at Riot Games, highlighted various tactics employed to counter cheats and cheat creators. These include hardware fingerprinting to prevent banned players from simply returning with new accounts, leveraging Windows security features, and even monitoring cheat communities on platforms such as Discord and Telegram.