Requiring PC players to potentially brick their motherboard by enabling Secure Boot is a slap in the face. It has seriously lowered the chance that I will buy the full game on release. Why should I be have to change my BIOS settings to play a dang game. Especially when it's only the second day of the Beta and people have already figured out how to cheat around it.
I agree. I do not even consider buying the game anymore after I downloaded the open beta today and learned that I need to fundamentally change settings in my system (which I am able to but simply do not want to because EA is "forcing" me to do so). Me and some friends were eager to see whether BF6 was better than the BF5 disaster and we won't give it another chance with this start.
@EA customer and UX experts: Please consider this to be a shoutout to rethink your decision...
To be clear, my understanding isn't necessarily that Secure Boot auto-stops cheats from working, but creates a permanent hardware ID for the machine and OS, which makes permanent bans signficantly more difficult (and/or at least expensive) to go around as it requires new hardware. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of many legitimate folks needing to change settings in their BIOS, and many (not saying you, OP) which are not technically inclined end up breaking their OS install due to needing to switch from Legacy/BIOS to UEFI in the process (which will not let Windows boot)
I doubt that there are many users with Legacy BIOS on the system. Especially a system that can run a AAA game in 2025. Intel discontinued support for legacy BIOS in 2020. Thats 5years ago
Haven't come across a cheater yet, sorry you can't sell your hacks OP
I don't sell hacks, goober. I'm an irritated consumer, voicing my irritation on the public forum for the product I am trying.
My PC parts were purchased new in 2024. I have rarely messed with BIOS settings, and am thankfully technically inclined so it wasn't too much of a process. The 30 and some older series Nvidia cards are still a good chunk of the most common on Steam. The 30 series was released late in 2020.
Understood, but note that the minimum spec I believe is the Intel 8xxx series [and AMD equivalent] which dates back to 2017. While that's now 8 years ago, I can fully imagine that there's folks that have upgraded their GPUs but not CPU or whathaveyou. Granted, many of these folks will be required to turn on SecureBoot and such in order to upgrade to Win11 (as it is also the minimum CPU required for it), but that's tangentially related.
My system relies on secure boot being turned off. Having to restart, edit bios settings, restart, play, and then changing bios settings back after playing. I know myself and even if I bought the game, this would prevent me from regularly playing it. It's stopped me from playing the beta. It is a headache that I don't need to get my down time.
So there better be compensation from EA for the game bricking motherboards, I followed the EA instructions video and forums page and my motherboard bricked. I could not get it to come back to life. I tried everything but nothing worked, bios flash,cmos reset, new ssd. I ended up having to buy a new motherboard and cpu because of this beta. this is ridiculous just from a beta having to pay 400$ because it ruined my pc. EA I want compensation no other game has ever required a bios setting altering the 10 years I’ve been on pc.
Many people disable Secure Boot because it blocks Linux. Enabling Secure Boot effectively forces you to run only signed kernels. That means dual-boot or multi-OS setups break — you’re stuck choosing between two options:
1. Play BF6 which requires Secure Boot (via EA’s Javelin anticheat) to launch.
2. Have every other game you own available to you - on any operating system.
I am probably not the only one who think playing this game is not worth make my daily driver (linux) unavailable.
Modern PCs and Linux distros can support Secure Boot, but it adds complexity (signing kernels, managing keys) and may fail in some setups. Is a single game worth all that trouble and the risk of breaking things? No.
I fully support EA’s goal to block cheating. Cheats are advanced and they dig deep into operating systems. This forces EA to be intrusive on your PC as well. I get that. But in practical terms the approach they have chosen excludes technically capable users who use multiple OSes, not just Windows.
For those who think this is about having modern hardware - my PC are entirely built of top tier component, bought and assembled in the spring of 2025.
58dba288601db00d I dual boot Win11 and Qubes OS which is a Linux distro that doesn't support secure boot by default.
I simply turn secure boot on/off in BIOS settings depending on which OS I boot.
I just build a brand new high end PC, only using Linux on it since Windows has become terrible with all the bloat and spyware.
They treat actually using a PC as its supposed to be (to run the software/OS of your choice not one predetermined or limited by the manufacturer) as something evil, they even went back to take away Battlefield 1 and 5 which worked perfectly before.
It would be more honest and respectable to just not release for PC at this point if they're gonna be like this, obviously that would get a lot of pushback today for good reason and it should, just like we should have (and have fought for years for) the freedom to play on (superior) hardware we should have the freedom to play on (superior) software because all of the advantages of gaming on a PC come from it being a free and open platform, now ofcourse companies like EA look at that as freedom for them to abuse gamers to the max rather than being constrained to what the console manufacturer allows (which in this care ironically might limit the amount of anti-consumer stuff they can push on gamers) not just as an opportunity to get sales way beyond the console userbase by catering to people who are more likely to be tech savvy and only use PC not console exactly because they're tired of artificial limitations.
When I had a Windows dual-boot that was already so much friction that I rarely ever rebooted (and therefor played the games they block on Linux) you wanna increase that friction having to screw with the BIOS every time too? Yeah in a world where Linux is growing, SteamOS desktop and a new Valve stationary console to undercut everyone again like the Deck might be around the corner this is 100 steps backwards. Battlefield 1/5 worked until they went back to block it just cause.
tyl0413 I don't consider toggling a BIOS setting on/off as causing more friction than installing a Linux gaming OS.
Secure boot can be turned off and Win11 will still boot. If Bitlocker is enabled it will ask for a recovery key. Turning Bitlocker off and then back on with secure boot disabled will stop it asking for a recovery key.
