Battlefield 6 is the most successful game in the franchise, having sold over seven million copies in its opening weekend alone. This many players means EA had to step up and deliver on security measures to keep cheaters at bay, and the company’s draconian approach seems to be working very well.
Countless social media posts across just about every Battlefield community on the internet have shown that EA isn’t playing this time around. Bans are running rampant throughout the nefarious part of the game’s fanbase, with players getting reprimanded for the smallest infractions and the least suspicion of cheating.
No matter if players were using advanced, very effective cheating tools to rack up hundreds of kills per match or using external means to “cheat,” like enabling mouse and keyboard on consoles, for example. This last case, usually associated with something called Cronus Zen, appears to be in EA’s sights to a great degree, with numerous reports of players getting permanently forbidden from playing Battlefield 6 just because they ran the device.
So, yeah, EA isn’t kidding: no cheating is allowed, and neither are external tools. Any semblance of trying to gain what’s perceived as an unfair advantage will result in permanent removal from the game, your $70 (or more) be damned. It’s a staunch stance, a stern approach, and I’m all for it. Cheating has been a plague on first-person shooters since their inception, but as technology advances, so do hacks of all kinds, including those that perform all bypasses under the sun to avoid detection.
By cracking down on any and all cheats out there, as well as on unfair and unsportsmanlike practices, EA is setting a major precedent in the genre, taking up the mantle as a leading figure in the fight against cheaters. I can’t believe I’m writing this, but EA and, by extension, Battlefield Studios, are taking charge and effectively curbing the most devastating practice in the shooter industry.
Yes, yes, they do make you use Secure Boot, enable TPM 2.0, and have a kernel-level anti-cheat enabled while playing the game: things that can and will be taken as potential infringements on player privacy. However, given how effective this approach seems in making BF6 as smooth an experience as it is, I’m on the fence about actually supporting it.
Of course, I value my privacy to the utmost and despise these security measures, but they’re a sign of the times and illustrate just how bad cheating has become. It’s time things changed, and EA itself seems to think so. And I, for one, am thankful that they do.
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