EA Anticheat Does Not Work (A Callout To EA)

Question

I think anyone who's ever played an online EA game within the past several years will agree with this statement, but just in case, I'm going to explain it as best I can with what little I know

First, I'm not going to pretend, I'm not going to sugarcoat, but I am going to be polite. EA's in-house anticheat is garbage. Their anticheat sits at the kernel of the system it's installed on. Allow me to repeat that. The anticheat EA currently uses is installed in the deepest level of your system, and if not, really close to it. That means your system could theoretically be completely scanned by any game by EA. But this also means anyone who gains access to your EA account without your permission can do the same. Having any program installed on that level is a security risk, not for the games, but for the users themselves

Second, these anticheats don't actually prevent cheating. There have been numerous reports of hackers on EAs games since it was rolled out, most of which have been relegated to PC specifically, as it's easier to hack a PC than it is a console. Players have had their accounts banned because of these malicious hackers. On top of that, EA has done nothing to stop it. If anything, their silence tells way more than simply acknowledging the problem, let alone telling us they're going to address it. This means people who genuinely care about these games are losing time and money because of these bad actors, and EA is just letting it happen

Third, let's discuss EA themselves, and their lack of communication. They release these games, expect players to buy them, play on their servers, buy tons of microtransactions, but when people stop playing because hackers are having their own version of fun, EA says nothing. EA does nothing. And in the instance they do say something, the damage has already been done. I have a number of educated guesses as to why they don't, but at the end of the day, none of them matter. Regardless of the quality of games released, the quality of the anticheat makes even shovelware look good. And when shovelware looks good, that's when you know you failed

This is a callout to EA. You need to scrap your anticheat. Permanently. It is abysmal. You make plenty of money every year, you can use some of it on anticheat software from other developers. It's not that hard, and knowing you earned over $7 billion at the end of the fiscal year of 2025, whatever that software costs will be mere pennies in comparison

Please, do the right thing for your customers

ea_lunardustcat · Answer

Thank you for posting.&nbsp;
Like many other products in the anti-cheat space, EA Javelin Anticheat operates in the kernel by necessity. Because external cheats don't interact with the game process itself, they can easily evade many anti-cheat techniques, especially if they do things from the kernel. The kernel is the deepest part of the operating system, and if cheats operate from there while the anti-cheat does not, they can hide everything they are doing with no chance for us to detect or prevent any of it. While having a kernel driver is essential to protecting fair play in our games, we also understand the concerns that a kernel driver can raise. EA Javelin Anticheat only runs when one of our protected games is running, and it will uninstall itself if you have uninstalled all of your EA games that have EA Javelin Anticheat protection. We have partnered closely with internal teams and 3rd party assessors to validate that EA Javelin Anticheat will only inspect what it needs to for anti-cheat purposes… everything else is off-limits.&nbsp;
As for our AntiCheat efforts and communication, you can refer to the security news and updates we’ve published across our various titles.

zer0studioz · Answer

Regardless of whether or not that's true, why the consistent radio silence? If people are complaining about hackers, then wouldn't it be in your best interest to keep users happy by at least telling them they've been heard, especially when it's been mentioned many times over? You cannot tell me in good faith there's a reason your anticheat needs to be that secure while simultaneously ignoring us when we tell you your games are being exploited. That's the equivalent of a major corporation being hit with a class action lawsuit while refusing to admit any wrongdoing. It is a bad look, and that's being polite about it. And considering the latest news post on your security news page was nearly a year ago, you are absolutely not doing yourself or EA any favors by telling me to refer to that. It is the dictionary definition of useless

ea_lunardustcat · Answer

I understand that you’re unhappy with the level of public communication around anti-cheat. At the same time, I wouldn’t equate limited public communication with inaction.
Anti-cheat work is one of those areas where sharing less publicly does not necessarily mean less is being done behind the scenes, as there is always a balance between reassuring players and avoiding details that could be useful to those trying to exploit the game.
We’ve also shared that anti-cheat effectiveness is measured in several ways, including Match Infection Rate, which measures how often regular players encounter confirmed cheaters over time and helps assess whether enforcement actions are improving fair play. However, there will always be a difference between the total number of players we think could be cheating, and the amount we actually take enforcement against with high confidence. We take player disputes very seriously as we never want to impact a legitimate player’s ability to play one of our games.
I can refer you to the information that has already been shared publicly. You can also keep an eye on updates from the official channels for the title you play, or if you’d like, I can direct you to those as well.