A Battlefield 6 developer has addressed the recent controversy surrounding the game's anti-cheat measures, specifically the requirement that players enable Secure Boot in their BIOS to play. While not everybody needed to tinker with their PC's BIOS to play Battlefield 6, those who did were left disgruntled by the inconvenience. Now, a developer for the shooter has said he "hates the cheaters" for forcing DICE to make Secure Boot a requirement.
Earlier this month, EA confirmed that Battlefield 6 will launch with its proprietary anti-cheat system, Javelin. The studio's system, initially launched as EA Anticheat in 2022 and refreshed to Javelin earlier this year, is a kernel-level anti-cheat that has already sparked outrage among the community. For those who may be unaware, kernel-level anti-cheats are often controversial because they operate with extremely high privileges on a user's system. The programs are allowed access to nearly every aspect of a PC, which enables them to target any potential cheat software. However, not everyone enjoys allowing a third-party program to have such deep access to their computer.
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Battlefield 6 Dev Talks Secure Boot Controversy
If Javelin wasn't already controversial enough, fans were upset to discover that Secure Boot needed to be enabled in order to play the Battlefield 6 open beta earlier this month. This is something that will carry over to the full game, and not everyone is happy about it, including the game's developers. In a recent interview with ComicBook, Studio Technical Director at Ripple Effect, Christian Buhl, said he "hates cheaters" for making Secure Boot a requirement. "For some people, it is a barrier to entry for the game, and I wish that it didn’t have to be," the Technical Director told the outlet.
Buhl goes on to tell ComicBook, "I wish we didn’t have to turn on Secure Boot. But again, a couple of years ago, we had a lot of deep, deep discussions about anti-cheat and what we wanted our approach to be. We had discussions about how much do we want to focus on friction versus fairness? And the fact is, the more anti-cheat you do, the more friction you add, but hopefully the more fairness you add."
The developer then explains how Secure Boot is a "super powerful tool" to prevent cheating in Battlefield 6, but did note that it's "not foolproof." Buhl also notes that the studio wanted to focus on fairness for the next entry in the series, explaining that if a player gets into the game and everybody is cheating, they will probably stop playing. As for the controversy surrounding Secure Boot, which requires players to access their BIOS to enable, the developer said they're looking at ways to help players when it comes to enabling it. "We’re going to do everything we can to put FAQs out there and help people walk through turning it on," Buhl said. "I hate the cheaters for making us do this, but I think it’s going to be better for everyone else to have fewer cheaters and more fairness in the game."
Battlefield 6 won't be the only first-person shooter launching this year that requires Secure Boot, either. Call of Duty publisher Activision also recently revealed that Black Ops 7 will combat cheaters with two new features: Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. This will be the first Call of Duty title to launch on PC with these measures in place, but they were also implemented to both Warzone and Black Ops 6 with its Season 5 update.
Battlefield 6
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 83 /100 Critics Rec: 90%
- Released
- October 10, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, In-App Purchases, Users Interact
- Developer(s)
- Battlefield Studios
- Publisher(s)
- EA
