Any updates on Linux support?
Will Battlefield 6 fully support playing on Linux? I read something about anti-cheat, but as it is 2025 and even e-sports titles like The Finals are handling anti-cheat on Linux fine, this is just a ...
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It is NOT pure developer laziness! The BF6 developers/EA had no choice but to implement these new requirements because of constant hacks cheats and exploits by unethical people. Gamers complain when game makers don't try hard enough to stop cheaters and then when those devs try to do the right thing people like you chime in that they are lazy without actually knowing why Linux has this issue and go straight to blaming the wrong people.
I'm no IT pro but it took only an hour trying to find proper TPM 2.0 firmware update and proper update tool to patch TPM vulnerabilities. I Simply patched current 2.0 module to most current version which took 5 minutes to update the module. Then took 5 min to download and update my UEFI firmware for my motherboard. Then 15 minutes to enable both secure boot functions and TPM and TMP and confirm everything was working properly. Total of not even 2 hours to do my part for the benefit of BF6 Anti cheat by implement secure boot and the bonus is my pc is now more secure for things not related to games!
I'm sure some companies devs would rather just sit on their *** and take the EZ route but NOT but bad actors gave them no other choice. So rather than being lazy/greedy by creating yet another crappy prematurely released buggy exploitable cheat ladened game just to sell more copies and get richer they decided on quality over quantity instead of lining their pockets. The additional toolset of secure boot and TPM is needed to better enforce or investigate cheat reports leading to a more enjoyable user experience. What BF6 is doing is setting a higher standard for themselves and will result in better future cheat blocking mechanisms/detection methods to keep up with modern advanced cheat methods. It minimizes the risk and the number of cheats getting past in the first place and a solid foundation to any good Anti cheat system. This deters & helps properly monitor to better ensure dishonest players are not easily getting around the Anti cheat by loading modified unofficial uncertified drivers at boot time.
By the way it's not the fault of EA or the DEVS that Linux don't properly support secure boot/TPM. Linux is open source so there are many different compilations from different dev teams and/or diff communities all together. Because of there being so many different versions and/or builds of LINUX, those Linux devs were lazy and took the EZ route and utilized exploit that at the time existed to make a workaround to load unofficial uncertified and possibly unsafe drivers by using now expiring/expired security keys which are used byTPM/UEFI Bios to properly authenticate the loading of official unmodified drivers. All Linux communities would have to work together to create a unified universal key and issue it for Linux and insure there is a list of secure certified drivers to boot to. UEFI Bios and TPM firmware would need to be updated by hardware vendors? maybe?
I'm no IT pro but it took only an hour trying to find proper TPM 2.0 firmware update and proper update tool to patch TPM vulnerabilities. I Simply patched current 2.0 module to most current version which took 5 minutes to update the module. Then took 5 min to download and update my UEFI firmware for my motherboard. Then 15 minutes to enable both secure boot functions and TPM and TMP and confirm everything was working properly.
Well the problem is not exactly what you think it is. Cheats for games, are more popular on windows side of things, because its a business. Cheats and hack are sold for money on the windows side by the people who make them. Where as on the linux side cheats and hacks are open source, so it's not to hard patch the exploits plus those that work on hacks and cheats don't do linux is for that reason. It simply to them no profitable when hacks and cheats are open source and as such generally are free to grab. Of course the ethics and morals of downloading them and using is disgusting, but the fact its open source makes it easier to deal with them. Then there are ways to stop it that doesn't need client side anti cheat that has kernel level access, and it can be done server side.
But the important part on the secure boot issue isn't because linux is fragmented or devs are lazy. Its just that Linux and Windows are fundamentally different things. Windows is more like monolithic with different levels to its kernel, where as linux kernel is modular with no levels or rings which most client side anti-cheat software uses. Secure boot doesn't work for linux because it does its boot process differently than windows, with secure boot mostly being a windows exclusive tool that distros can't utilize as it requires a lot of money to get a distro to work with secure boot (most distros are managed by nonprofits, and most only utilize open source code which secure boot violates).
Also I wouldn't say TPM or secure boot is watertight as microsoft claims to be when you got people who've invest money or just the will to find ways to circumvent (both can circumvented already at this point). Not to mention that people with older systems would theoritcally be unable to play the game if it requires tpm, considering that is why windows 11 has had such a lot adoption rate because people are hanging on to older computer systems (we even have people who still use windows 7, and actively maintain it so it can still play modern games). Which seems counter intuitive when the game can run on a nvidia geforce 1660 and EA betting hard on a game that run on oldest kind of hardware with heavy optimization for launch. Telling these users to buy a new computer won't do much either when prices for a new one or one moderately up to date costs so much right now.
Linux is way safer than windows. Its open source, its always being diligently watched over and comb by thousands of devs. The only 2 times someone tried to sneak malware into the linux kernel got caught almost instantly and the issues dealt with way faster than microsoft with windows. Windows a black box, how it works and operates is unknown. So bugs and exploit can hide within it and you send with issues where printer stool function meant anyone could remotely access your computer and wasn't fixed for nearly a year after it was discovered. Until then we had to disable printing functions on windows 10 and older because its all the same code like an old building getting a new floor built atop of it.
Linux and windows are fundamentally different to each other meaning differences in how they work. Secure boot is just a fancy tool that only works for windows because it cost so much to get certificates for your linux distro to work with it and it can at randomly break it. Of course there are things like WINE and proton that makes games run on linux which is fine, but to say that linux is the unsafe is dubious when you have organizations of people watching everything that goes into linux and heavy scrutiny from some lone dev doing it in their free time to companies like AMD, NVIDIA, Google, etc. that pay devs to do that work as well. Windows on the other hand is a black box, it has shown to have problems and those problems are catching up with it.
Valve is also investing heavily into linux with SteamOS, and into projects like wayland, arch foundation, etc to so that linux can have the infrastructure that will make it easier to play games on linux and easier for games that use invasive anti-cheat be able to provide a fun gaming experience and the protections need to ensure you don't get hackers or cheaters. So its kinda dumb if EA decides not to find other ways to let linux player play the game, and would be dumber if they decide to claim that cheaters are on linux when money for cheats and hacks is in windows.
p.s. Also having a kernel level anti-cheat is a recipe for disaster anyways when its running on elevated position within windows where it can break the system if something goes wrong. Consider cloud strike when it's security software ran at kernel level and broke because of a bad hacky live patched pushed to computer systems crashing them.
