The latest version of EA anticheat is required to play

always has been an issue. this game is old enough now that EA really couldnt care about it. now they just banning all the accounts to justiy lower player counts then to justify shutting down servers. 

This happened to me and I got permanently banned for cheating 6 hours later. Good luck. 

Uninstalling and reinstalling EA anticheat didn't fix it?

That didn't fix it but then I Uninstalled and reinstalled the whole game, which did fix it. Then I played for like 4 hours before getting banned for "cheating".  No clue if theyre actually related because ea just says they cant tell you why they banned you because that would somehow compromise their anticheat system but seems unlikely that it was unrelated. Never happened before in my 200 some hours of playing until the day I got banned and I didnt change any software or anything on my pc. 

The game was impossible to play with disconnects every 5-60 minutes. After the new AC, now it consistently disconnects after 5 minutes tops. Their AC has been garbage for years, and the reason there are no people active, you can barely start a server. And yeah, could be an 'old game' , but good luck convincing me and the others that got zero help for years to buy into the new one they are working on...It's truly sad for all the game developers that do an amazing job and produce games with stunning visuals, only to be ruined by publishers and the game services folks...

Before mine did the error it kept putting me in half bot or empty servers for like a couple weeks. Then I got the error and reinstalled the game and suddenly I was getting in full servers every time no problem, for the 4 or 5 hours I played that one day before I got banned. Something is broken with all of it. I told EA all of this and they just responded saying I cheated and will remain banned. 

IGN is reporting that EA is laying off hundreds of people. We are probably getting banned by AI, and chat bots are denying the appeals. 

Hot garbage. 

Yeah, it's been similar situation across other game dev companies. AI and bots is why Overwatch lost most it's players. 
The interesting thing is, that they are posting videos on the new BF they are working on, and I am like - who in their right mind will buy into that, when you are clearly offering no support. BF2042 has been a disaster since day 1 and majority of the issues were such little things to address from a development perspective, which tells you what complete circus the inner workings of the company must be...