Appeal to EA developers/moderators

Hello everyone!

I'd like to address the EA moderators. I know there are such people here.

This is a topic that's been discussed for a while, but the developers haven't responded. And this is Secure Boot. My PC is fairly new, and I know how to enable it, so please don't waste your time by telling me I need to press two buttons. That's not the issue. The problem is, I bought this BEFORE this "protective" feature was introduced. This is completely unfair and unjust to players. I don't understand what the problem is?! No one says anything or complains about newer games (BF6), since everything was spelled out in the system requirements from the very beginning. Why are they taking away what I paid for? I would have already written to Steam support about this behavior, but unfortunately, that's not possible. Please remove this requirement and return everything to the way it was! After this introduction, the technical condition of the project has significantly deteriorated. There have been many discussions and complaints about this.

For those who don't know or have no idea what secure boot is and think it will instantly solve their cheating problems. An engineer's response:

This issue in requiring secure boot is first off it was never designed as an anti-cheat tool or to even remotely aide anti-cheat tools. The purpose of secure boot is to stop unauthorized software from running at boot time and to only boot from authorized sources. It also helps in preventing some malware from being installed in certain places without your knowledge. Some malware is rootkits.

However the question that has to be asked in regards to this fanciful secure boot is what exactly is an authorized software? Does that mean the owner themselves of the system doesn't make the decision what is or is not authorized? The answer is yes the owner does get to decide what is or is not authorized its the whole point of secure boot. It is to secure it from unauthorized software. By default without doing any changes secure boot uses the keys that were provided with it. However, you can remove these pre-configured keys and just put your own, sign the kernels and software with your own keys and everything will pass the secure boot checks because all secure boot does is checks that the software is digitally signed and that the key used to sign is one that is recognized as being trusted. Whether it be microsoft's or your own if you added your own into the list.

As you can see secure boot is not a mechanism for a third party to use to validate anything, rather for whoever owns or is using the system to validate that nothing outside of what you authorized can be installed especially in sensitive areas. Secure Boot is more useful to organizations then it is for some individual however some individuals may like the added protection. However it is a hindrance to PC builders or even those who simply have no issues upgrading their hardware as certain configurations of hardware may not allow for secure boot to be enabled or you may be forced to downgrade the bios version which may mean losing out on any functionality or fixes that an updated bios version offered. If you dual boot you may not be able to have secure boot enabled. As for secure boot being enabled by default is actually not the common practice because microsoft requires OEM's that secure boot being able to be disabled in order to have that microsoft logo on their computers they are selling and for good reason too as secure boot was not designed for everyone. Windows 11 requiring Secure Boot is just that. It only requires that the system be compatible with secure boot not that it must be enabled. This is why cheaters will still exist and the reason anyone is seeing cheaters more is not because it is working rather the majority of the legitimate users simply are not playing due to this change preventing them from one reason or another. This will not stop cheaters from using root kits simply because they can tell windows that its legitimate software and trusted and thus passes the secure boot checks and we are back to the original problem and if anything it will be worse since now the Anti-Cheat can't say the rootkit is untrusted or whatever else and must accept that it is since the system itself said it was.

In conclusion it makes no sense for any game to require secure boot as it was never designed as a validation check for a third party rather it was only designed for whoever was running the system or organization to ensure what is running at boot is what was approved and you could just allow cheat software to be on that approved list and it doesn't make it any more easier for an anti-cheat tool to do anything nor does it make it more difficult for someone to cheat if anything it makes it easier to pass the validation checks. Overall this change just made it harder for legitimate player base to play the game or at all.

So many people are disillusioned that they can no longer access BF2042. Previously, there were a stable 6,000 to 12,000 players, but now there are barely 1,500.

So, I'd like to address this to the moderators. Please pass these thoughts on to the developers. These aren't just one person's thoughts. They represent the views of over 6,000 players.