Battlefield 6

Battlefield 6 is the 2025 entry in EA's large-scale military shooter series, developed by Battlefield Studios (a group led by DICE with Ripple Effect, Criterion, and Motive). It released October 10, 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, with a free-to-play battle royale mode, RedSec, following later that month. It runs on DICE's proprietary FrostbiteEngineFrostbite (EA / DICE)Frostbite is DICE's proprietary engine for Electronic Arts, known for large-scale environmental destruction. It powers the Battlefield series, including Battlefield 6, and a range of other EA titles. EA has publicly reaffirmed staying on Frostbite over Unreal for its destruction technology.1 game in this family → engine. On PC it is sold through Steam, the EA app, and the Epic Games Store.

Battlefield 6 on PC requires UEFI Secure Boot enabled, plus TPM 2.0, for EA's kernel-level JavelinAnti-cheatEA Javelin AnticheatEA Javelin is Electronic Arts' in-house kernel-mode anti-cheat, the rebrand (2025) of EA Anti-Cheat, which first shipped with FIFA 23 in 2022. In Battlefield 6 it requires UEFI Secure Boot to be enabled, using a hardware-to-OS trust chain to detect tampering and make kernel-driver cheats harder. The Secure Boot mandate currently blocks Linux and the Steam Deck.1 game in this family → anti-cheat; the game will not launch into multiplayer without Secure Boot on. If you are on older hardware or an unfamiliar BIOS, expect to enable those firmware settings before you can play, and know that Linux and the Steam Deck are currently blocked. EA's most recent anti-cheat progress report is the best source for the current state.

Battlefield 6 ships with EA Javelin Anti-Cheat, EA's in-house kernel-mode anti-cheat (the rebranded successor to EA Anti-Cheat, which first shipped with FIFA 23 in 2022). The load-bearing detail is its hardware requirement: Battlefield 6 requires UEFI Secure Boot to be enabled and will not launch into multiplayer without it, and EA lists TPM 2.0 among PC requirements. The stated rationale is a hardware-to-OS trust chain (firmware to bootloader to kernel) that Javelin uses to detect tampering and make kernel-driver cheats harder. The trade-off is real: the Secure Boot mandate blocks Linux and the Steam Deck, which EA has said it is evaluating future support for. The anti-cheat installer is EAAntiCheat.Installer.exe; we will not assert the exact runtime driver name without a clean source.

EA publishes regular anti-cheat progress reports with its own metrics: during the August 2025 beta it said it stopped roughly 330,000 cheat attempts, and after launch it reported millions of attempts blocked and a roughly 98 percent clean-match rate. These are vendor-reported figures, worth labeling as such. Technical director Christian Buhl publicly acknowledged the cost of the Secure Boot requirement, saying he wished they did not have to do it because it locks some players out, and framing it as a response to cheating. Coverage of the requirement, including players struggling to enable Secure Boot on older hardware, ran in PC Gamer, Tom's Hardware, and elsewhere.