The Daily Populous Saturday August 9th, 2025 day edition
Authored by ign.com and submitted by Darth_Vaper883

Update 1:17pm PT: EA has issued a statement acknowledging the cheating occurring in Battlefield 6, and highlighting its efforts to combat it. In the post, the publisher says its existing tech has already prevented 330,000 attempts to cheat or tamper with anti-cheat controls. Additionally, players reported 44,000 instances of cheating on day one and another 60,000 today so far. EA says it will continue to evolve its efforts to combat cheating, and encourages users to continue reporting issues.

Battlefield 6 isn't even out yet, but cheaters have already infiltrated the Open Beta on PC. That's despite requiring players to enable Secure Boot to access the playtest, and EA's own anti-cheat system, Javelin.

EA published a user guide for how to enable Secure Boot on PC just yesterday, August 7. As we reported at the time, it requires a degree of confidence, as it involves tinkering with the BIOS, but it works by checking that only trusted programs are running on a player's PC before they play. And no, this isn't just an EA diktat — coincidentally, this week Activision also announced the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will require the exact same thing: Secure Boot enabled.

Despite this, players have begun posting on social media to share video clips of purported cheaters, such as this one below, already viewed 5.8 million times on X / Twitter.

🚨CONFIRMED: Cheats are already working in Battlefield 6.

This footage proves CHEATS are FULLY FUNCTIONAL on Day 1 of Early Access Beta. pic.twitter.com/j9WSyWPEI1 — ItsHapa (@ItsHapa) August 7, 2025

DICE producer Alexia Christofi was quick to respond , confirming that the team was aware of the issue and assured beta testers that the player identified as cheating in the clip above was "already banned."

With the Battlefield 6 open beta boasting over 300,000 concurrent players on Steam alone, making it the third most-played game on Valve’s platform behind only Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2, developer DICE has said it’s working on a "substantial" increase in server capacity.

Of course, it is impossible to stamp out cheating in competitive multiplayer games completely, but given the established narrative around cheating in rival shooter Call of Duty, EA will be keen to nip this one in the bud ahead of Battlefield 6's launch in October.

As it stands, it seems TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot are the new reality for PC gamers. Here's Activision's explanation, from a blog post published yesterday:

TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) is an industry-standard, hardware-based security feature built onto CPUs or motherboards that verifies the PC’s boot process has not been tampered with. Secure Boot makes sure a PC can only load trusted software when Windows starts.

When Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 releases later this year, TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot will be required to play on PC. "These hardware-level protections are a key part of our anti-cheat efforts, and we’re asking all players to get compliant now," Activision warned.

If you’re looking for information on how to join the Battlefield 6 Open Beta, head to our BF6 Open Beta Guide, where you’ll find details on how to get into the BF6 Open Beta, the dates and times, available maps, and more. If you’re confused about how to get Twitch drops or how to link your EA Account to Twitch, our Open Beta Twitch Drops guide has all the intel you need to get set up.

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.