Field Guide · Anti-cheat

EA Javelin Anticheat

EA 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. Javelin also protects other EA titles, such as EA SPORTS FC 26 and skate., whose Steam pages list it as kernel-level anti-cheat with no Secure Boot or TPM requirement, so this guide records the firmware ask on the title. Corrected 2026-10-20: this entry used to list Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 as what Javelin itself asks of a machine; that is Battlefield 6's requirement.

kernel · with gameLoads a kernel-level driver while the game runs, then unloads it when you quit.

How it loads

While a protected game runs

Firmware it asks for

Set per title: Secure Boot, TPM 2.0

Games catalogued

Catalogued as of

October 2026

What it can and cannot see

EA Javelin runs a kernel driver while a protected game is open. In Battlefield 6 it leans on the firmware: it asks for Secure Boot so the machine can prove, from hardware up, that nothing tampered with the boot chain before the game trusted it. It examines the host while you play; it does not see a second computer or capture hardware that never touches that host. The Secure Boot requirement currently keeps it off Linux and the Steam Deck.

The same boundary applies to every anti-cheat here. Anti-cheat that runs on your PC can examine what happens on that PC, to the depth its design allows. It cannot see a second computer, a capture device, or hardware placed between an input device and the port it plugs into. That is why the presence of an anti-cheat is not, on its own, proof of anything about a player, in either direction. Vera describes what runs; it does not decide what it means.

The processes you'll see

The user-mode processes this anti-cheat runs, the ones that show up in your own process list. Each is catalogued in the Field Guide's processes section:

eaanticheat.gameservice.exe

Games that use it

Battlefield 6

Electronic Arts / DICE·kernel · with game

Source

Catalogued by Vera from the anti-cheat maker's own documentation and named public reporting (Ars Technica, PC Gamer, Eurogamer, BleepingComputer, and others). Anti-cheats change; these notes reflect the public record as of October 2026. What is here is public evidence, never an accusation about a person.