Battlefield 6 Developers Worked With Sony, Microsoft to Combat Cheating on PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Battlefield Studios and EA have made no secret of the fact that they are taking the potential for cheating and hacking in Battlefield 6 quite seriously. In a recent interview with PushSquare, Ripple Effect technical director Christian Buhl spoke about Battlefield Studios having partnered up with Sony and Microsoft to detect hardware-level cheats on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

This includes catching the use of devices like the Cronus Zen, which allows users to set up multiple keystrokes through scripting, and even the use of keyboard and mouse while making the console still think that controllers are being used.

“Yeah, it’s unfortunate that cheating has become a problem within the console space, especially with Cronus Zen machines and everything,” said Buhl. “So we’ve partnered with PlayStation and both Microsoft in this regard to kind of do detection. We actually have our own level of macro detection and everything.”

“So if players are doing rapid with Javelin on the PC side. That’s why we’ve enabled Secure Boot to help us combat the never-ending cheater problem. And we are aware of the console cheater issue, and we’re going to be taking cheating very, very seriously here. And we want to preserve as much of the fair play and competitive integrity that we can, because at the end of the day, we want to ensure that you’re having a fair competitive space to play Battlefield 6 in.”

This is part of the larger efforts of the developers under the Battlefield Studios banner—Criterion, Ripple Effect, Motive Studios and DICE—at curbing cheating in the upcoming multiplayer shooter. Leading up to the open betas going live back in August, a post outlining these anti-cheat measures for PC was published, which noted that PC players would need to enable Secure Boot to play Battlefield 6.

Secure Boot, along with Trusted Platform Module (TPM) are both used by EA’s own Javelin Anticheat system to block cheats that might start up during the boot up process of a Windows gaming PC. The anti-cheat system is also getting some bespoke features to combat cheating through the Battlefield Positive Play team.

The anti-cheat systems had already proven to be quite effective with the first open beta during early August, after which EA confirmed that it had managed to prevent 330,000 attempts at cheating and tampering with the game in just a couple of days. The company also spoke about how Secure Boot was “not intended to be a silver bullet”. Rather, it would bolster the capabilities of Javelin Anticheat.

“On Secure Boot, I want to be clear that Secure Boot is not, and was not intended to be a silver bullet,” reads the post. “Secure Boot is how you’re helping us build up our arsenal. It’s another barrier that helps us make it harder for cheat developers to create cheat programs, and makes it easier for us to detect it when they do.”

Battlefield 6 is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release on October 10.