Cheaters spoil Battlefield 6 beta despite aggressive kernel-level anti-cheat

When the open beta went live, many players were met with a message saying that they needed to enable secure boot for Battlefield 6 to run at all — which resulted in a Steam review bomb on BF 2042. Not only does this theoretically lock out any players on older hardware — even though the game seems to be remarkably well optimised — it also ensures that BF6 is unplayable on Linux and the Steam Deck. 

The worst part of the stringent anti-cheat requirements is that Javelin anti-cheat doesn't seem to be doing much. In the above clip, the POV player is seen using wall hacks to spot enemies behind walls. One argument that keeps coming up in defence of the anti-cheat requirements, though, is that the secure boot requirement makes it more difficult to hide the fact that you are cheating. In theory, this should mean that cheaters will be banned as soon as possible. 

In this case, Alexia Christofi, a producer at Dice working on Battlefield 6, has responded to the aforementioned video saying “Team are aware and I believe this player is already banned." However, the source of the footage is reportedly still able to use the same cheats in-game, so whether that is true is unclear. In the thread beneath Christofi's response, another player coyly replies that the cheat used is still active, saying “But you sure as hell have not banned the cheat itself...don't ask how I know.”

Battlefield 6 is slated to launch on October 10, 2025, so EA and Dice have some time to figure out the anti-cheat situation, and the open beta will surely help the development team figure out how to close whatever exploits are being used. But for the time being, it seems as though strict kernel-level anti-cheat isn't the silver bullet for cheating in video games.