Electronic Arts Blocks More Than 300,000 Attempts To Cheat After Launching Battlefield 6 Beta

Games elephantine Electronic Arts launched an unfastened beta complete nan play for its upcoming first-person shooter Battlefield 6 and — almost instantly — nan crippled was swamped pinch cheaters.

Soon aft nan game’s launch, countless players complained online about encountering cheaters. In response, a personnel of Electronic Arts’ anti-cheat team, who goes by AC, wrote successful an charismatic forum that nan institution saw players study 104,000 “instances of imaginable cheaters” complete nan first 2 days of nan game’s being online, and that it stopped 330,000 “attempts to cheat aliases tamper pinch anti-cheat controls.” 

Like galore videogames today, specified arsenic Valorant, Electronic Arts uses a kernel-level anti-cheat strategy called Javelin, which intends nan strategy has nan highest imaginable privileges connected nan computer. This allows it to show everything that happens connected nan instrumentality pinch nan extremity of catching cheats, which are often moving successful nan inheritance and disguised arsenic immoderate different program. 

In their post, AC admitted that this strategy is not a guarantee that location will beryllium nary cheaters. AC besides referred to nan truth that nan crippled enforces Secure Boot, a Windows hardware-based information feature. 

“On Secure Boot, I want to beryllium clear that Secure Boot is not, and was not intended to beryllium a metallic bullet,” AC wrote. “Secure Boot is really you’re helping america build up our arsenal. It’s different obstruction that helps america make it harder for cheat developers to create cheat programs, and makes it easier for america to observe it erstwhile they do.”

“Anti-Cheat isn’t 1 and done, it’s an ever evolving battlefield, and what has worked for america antecedently aliases successful different games doesn’t ever activity successful each of them,” AC added. 

An Electronic Arts spokesperson told TechCrunch that nan institution has nary updated accusation connected nan numbers of players who were banned. 

Cheaters aliases crippled hackers are a problem for each online video game. In caller times, companies for illustration Riot Games, makers of Valorant, and Activision, nan makers of nan Call of Duty series, among others, person launched kernel-level anti-cheat systems. 

Philippe Koskinas, nan head and caput of anti-cheat for Riot Games, told TechCrunch earlier this year, location are respective ways successful which his anti-cheat strategy goes aft cheaters, arsenic good arsenic cheat makers and sellers. Those see banning cheaters, taking advantage of Windows’ ain information features to limit wherever cheats tin run, fingerprinting cheaters’ hardware truthful they can’t conscionable create a caller fresh relationship to cheat with, and moreover infiltrating cheat communities connected Discord aliases Telegram.