You’re kinda missing the real issue here, and it’s making this sound way more black-and-white than it actually is.
Linux does support Secure Boot and TPM. That part isn’t up for debate. It’s been a thing for years, and plenty of distros already ship signed bootloaders, support TPM 2.0, disk encryption, measured boot, all of that. The problem isn’t that Linux “can’t do it” — it’s that Linux doesn’t just hand full kernel control to third-party anti-cheat software by default. That’s a conscious design choice, not laziness or a lack of capability.
Also, Secure Boot and TPM don’t stop most cheating anyway. They only protect the boot process. Most modern cheats happen after the system has already started — memory manipulation, external hardware, DMA devices, VM tricks, logic exploits, you name it. Windows games that require Secure Boot, TPM, and kernel anti-cheat still have tons of cheaters, so clearly this isn’t the magic fix it’s being sold as.
Your “it only took me an hour to enable TPM” story is kind of beside the point too. Nobody is arguing that turning it on is hard. The issue is EA choosing an anti-cheat approach that’s deeply tied to Windows internals instead of using solutions that already work cross-platform. Games are doing this right now — including competitive shooters — and they’re not collapsing under cheaters because of it.
And blaming Linux devs for being “lazy” just doesn’t hold up. Linux is open by design. Users control their machines. That’s the whole point. A single universal key controlled by publishers or anti-cheat vendors wouldn’t be “more secure,” it’d be a massive downgrade in trust and user ownership. The flexibility you’re calling a flaw is literally why Linux is trusted in servers, infrastructure, and security-critical systems.
At the end of the day, EA didn’t “have no choice.” They made a choice. It’s a business and tooling decision — one that favors Windows and kernel-level enforcement because it’s easier for them, not because Linux is incapable or unsafe. Calling that inevitability doesn’t make it true.
So yeah, cheating sucks and devs should fight it — but pretending this is all Linux’s fault just doesn’t line up with how the tech actually works.
I agree, it's not linux's fault. Nothing other than the owner of the pc should have control over their pc plain and simple. There are some crazy smart people out there and if they want to cheat they will find a way. I love playing battlefield but unfortunately I have no way to do so as I left the Microsoft ecosystem years ago and pc life has been so much better with far less issues. My choice to never touch the mess called windows has ultimately been a decision to not support companies that embrace the Microsoft practices and thus limits my ability to enjoy games I used to enjoy. I agree cheaters suck but it would be nice if they could create a server side mechanism that can filter out those using the highly restrictive kernal level anti cheats and those running software based or no anti cheats and allow only those running the anti cheat structure matching to play together and not mix. That way those that don't want to give kernel level access to still play while having the understanding of the possibility of more cheaters and leave the choice up to the player to play with anti cheat players only or accept they may play with cheaters otherwise. Leave the choice to the player!
