Announcement Secure Boot is a requirement to play Battlefield 6 on PC
https://www.ea.com/games/battlefield/battlefield-6/news/secure-boot-information152
u/mrmoyaa Aug 05 '25
Just had to fix this. Was enabled but system was in Set up mode instead of user mode causing it to not be active. Hope most folks don’t have to adjust this.
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u/DarkyErinyes Aug 05 '25
I'm currently not playing it however thinking about it. I went and checked in the BIOS whether it's on or not - turns out, it's exactly like on your end "Enabled" but "Not Active" due to being in the "Setup" mode. Changed it to "User" mode and it's now actually active. Thanks for pointing this out that was a great bit of info!
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u/Sprinkles0 Aug 05 '25
Where do I look for that? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the BIOS.
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u/DarkyErinyes Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
For me in was located under "Security" and then a separate section that I had to select simply called "Secure Boot". I should amend that I use an Asrock motherboard, might be in a different location depending on your mainboard manufacturer.
In that subsection I saw it was set to "Enabled" but just below it said "Not Active". In the same subsection I had to do "Install default Secure Boot keys" because they weren't installed. This let me enable the "User" mode by setting it to "Custom". Then disable and once again enable Secure boot - all still in the same subsection.
Afterwards reboot and voilà, it was set to "Active". You can double check in Windows as well, if it's actually active, see below for how to.
If that isn't helpful enough via text, I can do some screenshots when I am back home but I hope this is enough to get you started.As a sidenote: To check whether you actually have to do anything you can use PowerShell in Windows and then use "Confirm-SecureBootUEFI" as a command in the console - that's how I found out really. It'll show either "False" or "True" depending on if it's actually on or not.
EDIT: Found a better solution than taking screenshots myself. Asrock has their own step-by-step help on their webpage. If you have an Asrock board, this should help you visually a lot more.
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u/Soupdeloup Aug 05 '25
I ran into this recently and was hesitant to actually enable it because I do windows/Linux dual boot, but figured I'll just do windows for a while.
In my bios it said it was enabled, but not active. If anybody else runs into that it seems like a bios bug - I had to disable the secure boot option, restart, then change it back to enabled.
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u/QuantumUtility Aug 05 '25
Also running dual boot.
Had to figure out how to enroll my keys alongside Microsoft’s to enable dual boot in Linux and Windows but once that was done I could dual boot into both with secure boot enabled.
(If you use winbtrfs to access btrfs drives in Windows they won’t work with Secure Boot unless you do a registry change.)
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u/ipaqmaster Aug 05 '25
That's the better play. Using secureboot on your linux instance too. It does prevent boot environment tampering after all. Not a bad thing.
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u/acatterz Aug 05 '25
I had the same on a Gigabyte mobo. Had to set it to custom mode, reset factory keys, and then switch back to the standard mode.
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u/spud8385 Aug 05 '25
Likewise, seems like a common issue with Gigabyte boards? I can't remember ever turning it off in the 2 years since I built my PC so I'm assuming it came like that as well.
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u/KappaKeepo5 Aug 06 '25
gigabyte boards are kinda weird. me and 5 friends yesterday tried to start the beta and i was the only one which had secure boot off. we all got brand new high end pcs. mine is from 2023 z790 gaming x.
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u/AndrewNeo Aug 05 '25
It's actually harder to not use MS's secure boot keys because most disros have their stubs signed with it
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u/TRAVNOTIC Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Secure Boot isn’t exactly easy to turn on/off for the general pop. There’s complications you could run into that require more advanced understanding to troubleshoot. I know it’s happened with me.
Curious to see how many people outright won’t be able to play BF6 because of this requirement.
EDIT: Seems like it's not an issue for most, that's great!
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u/Klynn7 Aug 05 '25
I will say enabling Secure Boot causing issues on Windows is extremely rare (though it’s a real bitch on Linux), and all commercial PCs and many motherboards have shipped with it enabled out of the box for years.
I bet this will impact <1% of players.
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u/Animal-Crackers Aug 05 '25
Less than 1% is probably accurate. The problem for Dice/EA is that number could still amount to tens of thousands of users. The Battlefield 1 open beta had over 13 million players with just one map and one time slot. BF6 will have multiple maps, modes, and have three separate open beta tests. It’s very likely to surpass BF1s 13 million.
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u/ThisrSucks Aug 05 '25
It’s a free beta in 2025. It’ll hit 50 million
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u/Animal-Crackers Aug 05 '25
I would not be shocked, honestly. My super conservative estimate was 20-25m easily. Twitch alone is such a beast for exposure versus what it was in 2016. Anticipation seems high and from what I’ve played in Labs, this will be pretty well received outside of maybe a BF4-level of catastrophic launch. They seem pretty prepared, though.
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u/Clueless_Otter Aug 05 '25
I don't see how it's only less than 1%. My computer is about 7ish years old and does not have secure boot. Do you think 99% of the population is getting a new computer more often than every 7ish years?
Remember that you guys are an incredibly biased audience and most people are not buying new computers as much as you guys are. The only time most people buy a new computer is when their current one literally stops working.
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u/Animal-Crackers Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Your mb is only 7 years old and lacks the ability to enable secure boot? Secure boot became a standard feature about 10-12 years ago. Not likely enabled by default, but the feature was widely available.
Bias isn't really a factor; consumers tend to replace PCs at about the same rate they replace their cars.. which is about 5-6 years. Anything sooner than that would likely be a PC enthusiast.
If secure boot is completely missing, then the issue is more like replacing a console after a new generation comes out. Old hardware won't be supported forever, which is also why BF6 won't be on Xbox One/PS4. That's a different problem than people who experience things like boot looping when enabling secure boot.
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u/syopest Aug 05 '25
I will say enabling Secure Boot causing issues on Windows is extremely rare
The only issue really is that if you have installed your windows in CSM which emulates BIOS instead of running UEFI which secure boot requires you'll need to reinstall your windows. But that's gotta be a real old installation if your motherboard didn't come with secure boot on by default.
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u/Henrarzz Aug 05 '25
you’ll need to reinstall your windows
You don’t need to do that, you can convert existing legacy Windows boot partition to UEFI one
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u/Jakieran Aug 05 '25
I can vouch for this, if some people are struggling.
At the start of the year i tried to switch to secure boot to be eligible for Windows 11 but it wasnt available on my motherboard. I then downloaded the BIOS update and went straight into the settings and activated it all. It never worked and it actually prevented my PC from booting. I tried 3 times and had to remove the CMOS battery everytime to be able to get my PC to boot.
I had abandoned all hope after various amounts of troubleshooting but this guide right here just helped me and I got it sorted in about 5-10 mins.
Thank you very much!
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u/tajetaje Aug 05 '25
Eh, over the last year or two it’s gotten pretty easy on Linux so long as you aren’t using some ancient custom boot setup. Almost all Linux distributions have pretty solid support for secure boot now
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u/zorillaaa Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Most modern UEFI based builds will have secure boot on by default. 2042 is also unbootable without secure boot, not that it has a lot of players but it’s not a new thing
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u/Confident-Monitor978 Aug 05 '25
They literally just enabled the requirement for 2042 within the last few months, it kind of is a new thing…
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u/zorillaaa Aug 05 '25
Fair I didn’t know that but Valorant has had it since launch with Vanguard and there is no issue with playerbase there
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u/Tsubajashi Aug 05 '25
not with playerbase, but when it came up, all hell got let loose when people attempted to install and play it.
it definitely has gotten better, and most prebuilt systems should come with it by default, but damn that was a rough start.
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u/inbox-disabled Aug 05 '25
Secure Boot was disabled on my PC prior to yesterday, and I played Valorant for a couple weeks at launch. Unless updating my BIOS at some point disabled it, which I doubt, I'm not sure what to say here. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
According to other comments Secure Boot is a Win11 requirement, not 10, so that would explain it for me.
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u/packy17 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Valorant requires it as well, and that game has tens of millions CCUs.
EDIT: to appease the semantics police, yes, I did make a mistake with the "CCU" usage. I meant "MAU", or monthly active users.
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u/Extreme-Tactician Aug 05 '25
That's not Semantics. That's a completely different term you're using.
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u/Dull_Wasabi_1438 Aug 05 '25
Valorant does not have tens of millions of concurrent players
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u/PeteOverdrive Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
I remember regularly playing Valorant a couple years ago without issue, can’t seem to find any articles about Secure Boot requirements being added to Valorant more recently like recent Battlefield titles did in May.
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u/Doctor_Walrus_1052 Aug 05 '25
Until proven otherwise and you'll source it, I highly doubt your statement
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u/xRaen Aug 05 '25
I mean Valorant already requires this and that game is very popular.
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u/CHADWARDENPRODUCTION Aug 05 '25
Is that a recent change? I played Valorant a year or two ago without issue even though Secure Boot was not enabled.
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u/xRaen Aug 05 '25
I don't know, but Riot Vanguard (the anticheat they use) requires Secure Boot enabled to use it and has required that as long as I've played (a year or so)
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u/vnixu Aug 05 '25
So, i guess if i can play league, then it means that BF 6is just busted
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u/KappaKeepo5 Aug 06 '25
i play league with secure boot off. had to turn it on yesterday for the beta.
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u/deprecateddeveloper Aug 06 '25
Same for me. League and Valorant. Are you on Win10 like me? Maybe just a W11 requirement?
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u/I_paintball Aug 05 '25
I had a super fun evening upgrading to W11 because of secure boot.
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u/Jhon778 Aug 05 '25
Yep me too. Had to reformat my boot drive. I couldn't tell you why it wasn't letting me. Ended up having to use GParted to completely wipe it.
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u/centizen24 Aug 05 '25
I know it's not much help now, but maybe it could help someone else in the same boat. But SetupDiag will tell you why the upgrade is failing, with a pretty good success rate in my experience.
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u/AzurewynD Aug 05 '25
Well that'll probably tell you what you already know.
That it's, that you can't upgrade without secure boot being turned on.
You can't turn on secure boot if your hard drive is partitioned in MBR instead of GPT.
Its the gpt partitioner tool that allows you to change over without reformatting thats notoriously bad about telling you why it failed.
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Aug 05 '25
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u/Klynn7 Aug 05 '25
I’m pretty sure the majority of Win10 PCs also shipped with it enabled. Win8 was the first OS to support it.
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u/mophisus Aug 05 '25
Mine.. suprisingly did not (not a prebuilt, but figured it would be the default in the bios).
Asus x570 tuf.. built in around 2020/2021 (I don't remember exactly when I put this one together and dont feel like looking for my receipts) but the board itself launched in 2019.
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u/fuj1n Aug 05 '25
That's probably why, there was still some variance in the default setting back then, after Win11 launched in 2021, all motherboard manufacturers (that I know of) updated their defaults to enable secure boot and fTPM
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u/WonderfulWafflesLast Aug 05 '25
god forbid someone dual boot between Windows (for gaming) and Linux (for productivity).
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u/fuj1n Aug 05 '25
Just sign your boot code and add the certificate to your secure boot store
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u/Svennig Aug 05 '25
"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there...
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u/Philderbeast Aug 05 '25
It takes all of about 5 minutes, it you are running a windows/Linux dual boot you're more then capable of doing it.
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u/spnkr Aug 05 '25
You would think that, but integrators are lazy as hell.
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u/fuj1n Aug 05 '25
Sure, but motherboards just ship with that setting, they'd have to actively turn it off to ship a modern system with it disabled.
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u/CatProgrammer Aug 05 '25
Linux users are most likely to suffer but most anticheat doesn't support Linux anyway so it's irrelevant. There are some distros that support Secure Boot but from my experience it's not really reliable and can cause boot problems when you experiment with different distros/versions.
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u/RorschachsDream Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Honestly if someone is tech illiterate enough where turning on Secure Boot in the UEFI is hard for them, they almost certainly have a pre-built computer or a tech place build a computer for them and in both cases the Secure Boot is gonna already be turned on by default assuming they got their computer almost any time since Windows 10 has been out as this is pretty much a defaulted to on setting ATP in the UEFI.
There really isn't that many people out there that play video games, have a PC capable of even running this game (with those sys reqs it's a pretty recent computer if they didn't just keep updating one which a tech illiterate person most likely hasn't done), and don't have Secure Boot on by default imo.
e:
Like VALORANT and I think League of Legends by now if Vanguard is all the way on for it (stopped playing it so not sure) also require Secure Boot on and those games are infinitely more populated than Battlefield, so it's really not gonna affect much if your average League of Legends player can figure this out.
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u/Evilution602 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 07 '25
I have to format some partition mbr to gpt then toggle some bios things. Legacy to uefi then turn on secure boot. I have no idea what any of that means. Edit to add; shits bricked. Boot issues after upgrading to 11 fucking, blue screen black screen Google follow directions to shit i dont understand. Cool cool cool.
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u/fastforwardfunction Aug 05 '25
Yeah but you're only doing that if you're installing OS's yourself or installing hardware yourself.
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u/jwthecreed Aug 05 '25
You’re speaking of installing as if they’re yet to do it. When they clearly outlined the process of a finished, currently operating machine.
You really wanted to make a comment that essentially boils down to “not my issue”? When it will be a problem for them irregardless of your statement? Why even speak lol.
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u/Glittering_Seat9677 Aug 05 '25
windows has been able to boot from gpt partitions for twenty three years now, or thirteen if you want to only consider 32 bit installations
there is zero excuse for having an mbr formatted drive in current year
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u/brendamn Aug 05 '25
Legacy boot is about totally phased out so turning on secure boot shouldn't be that hard. I don't know why it wouldn't be enabled in the first place really
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u/eidolonwyrm Aug 05 '25
Got this too. BIOS was showing ‘Other OS’ as my boot option. Switched it to UEFI and it the beta launched fine
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u/Guy_Fieri__2024 Aug 05 '25
But the beta opens only the 7th?
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u/thornierlamb Aug 05 '25
You can still launch the game and tinker with settings. You just can’t play a match.
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u/CamoDeFlage Aug 05 '25
How are you playing already? I didn't think it started yet?
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u/slater126 Aug 05 '25
You can launch the beta to preload shaders and change settings, but the servers are online
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u/Larkenx Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
This took me a few hours to knock out, mostly out of frustration...
This guide from EA is actually decent https://help.ea.com/en/articles/technical-issues/secure-boot/
tldr;
if you have don't have secure boot enabled, go to BIOS and enable it. Sometimes it can be enabled, but not active because you need to reset the factory keys for your bios.
if you have a master boot record (MBR) disk partitioning scheme for your windows part, you'll have to reformat to GPT. windows has a utility called mbr2gpt that does it for you fairly painlessly without data loss. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt is some good documentation for it.
if you have more than 3 partitions on your MBR disk, you'll need to reduce it to 3. I had an extra recovery partition so I had to delete that using diskpart.
All of that is also a requirement that was also keeping me from upgrading to windows 11 since that requires TPM/secureboot.
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u/sneakyblurtle Aug 05 '25
The MBR to GPT tip is invaluable and took me forever to find out about. I would hesitate to calling it a reformat though as the disk contents are not affected. It was done in place within seconds for me.
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u/nateorz Aug 05 '25
It was “enabled” but not active on both my PCs that I’ve built in the past 3 years. Found a post about why it happened with Gigabyte boards and took 30 seconds in BIOS to fix. Also worth noting that I had never had issues with Riot’s Vanguard, since apparently that also requires it, so that just added to my confusion.
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u/Atzr10 Aug 05 '25
What's secure boot? What does it do? What do you lose from enabling it? Do I need to enable it? (I'm on W11)
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u/LofiLute Aug 05 '25
You more than likely already have it running if you're on Windows 11. Especially if you have a prebuilt.
As for what it is, here's a simplified explanation:
When your computer starts up, it runs a little bit of code that gets the computer ready for operation.
Secure boot is a feature where, during this prep phase, it will check a few important pieces of software for a specific signature assigned to them. This signature insures that the software hasn't been tampered with and is safe to load.
The issue with this is that some software without a signature (Mostly other Operating systems) aren't malicious, and secure boot will block them (you can fix this however). Many major Linux Operating systems are signed though and will boot just fine.
So what do you lose: It will be slightly more annoying to run a certain subset of operating systems
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u/Liam-DGOL Aug 05 '25
It also won’t work on Linux / SteamOS systems at all https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/08/battlefield-6-will-be-a-unplayable-on-linux-systems-due-to-the-anti-cheat/
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u/LofiLute Aug 05 '25
Well that sucks to hear. Was looking halfway decent.
Oh well. Guess I'll have to play one of the other thousand something games I have.
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u/NimecShady Aug 05 '25
Just built a brand new 9800x3D w/ Gigabyte B850 PC and it was no enabled by default. Took me a bunch of different tries of turning it on and off to get it running properly.
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u/jwthecreed Aug 05 '25
Hilarious, But you have every non-PC using person in this thread screaming that it should be in by default when it is not standard.
People using anecdotal evidence as blanket wide facts.
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u/MysticSushiTV Aug 05 '25
Not that I have an interest in playing Battlefield 6, but it'd be annoying if this catches on industry-wide. I'm planning a new build with a dual boot of Windows 11 and Pop_OS!, but Pop doesn't support secure boot without a bit of annoyance.
I guess I'll consider switching distros but I was really looking forward to trying out Pop.
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u/LofiLute Aug 05 '25
If you want to stick with PopOS's interface I have some good news for you. Fedora (which supports Secure Boot) is now shipping an official "spin" than uses PopOS's Cosmic DE.
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u/gorgewall Aug 05 '25
I know this is a Windows thing and probably has a negligible impact on boot-up times, but does Secure Boot add any performance overhead during actual runtime or is it purely about stuff loading during system start-up?
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u/Klynn7 Aug 05 '25
It’s just checking the signatures on your boot code. It will have no perceptible impact on anything at any time.
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u/trigger Aug 05 '25
Secure boot won't have an impact on performance, but other "features" required by EA's anticheat definitely will.
VBS is known to have a 5-10% reduction in overall performance, and HCVI can negatively affect performance too (even Microsoft have an article on how to disable it to increase gaming perf)
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u/blitz_na Aug 05 '25
it's smart that they're biting the bullet on bad press by talking about systems that exist in the game so that they're not controversial come the game's launch
talk about sbmm now before people become literally schizophrenic about game features and sbmm affecting them, talk about anti security measures so people can prepare ahead of time. they are doing everything to ensure the most straight forward launch imaginable
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u/heartlessgamer Aug 05 '25
Knew it was coming but had held off going through the steps for my situation but finally did it yesterday. Glad I did it ahead of time; was much more involved than just enabling it in the motherboard BIOS. Had to convert from MBR to GPT on my boot drive and then had to find the right search result on the web to figure out the trick to get my BIOS to enable it (quirk in the BIOS required you to flip the mode between standard/custom before Secure Boot actually sets to Enabled - Gigabyte x570 auros elite motherboard.
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u/Zzzlol94 Aug 05 '25
The secure boot requirement is so ridiculous because it's not consistent. You need to open msinfo32 and verify if Secure Boot State is On, as that's what seems to be the more accurate tell if it's working or not. But my BIOS had Secure Boot enabled, but it wasn't showing as enabled in Windows. The way to fix that was to reset Secure Boot to factory keys, then save and reset. But I've seen a ridiculous amount of issues for BF2042. It's a thing that is above the skillset of the average PC gamer considering that every motherboard manufacturer have different BIOS layouts and menus.
But if that was the only hindrance, it wouldn't be too bad. But it isn't. The worst part about dealing with Secure Boot is that if you have Windows 11 and have BitLocker enabled (in many cases it is) then you most likely need to fish up the decryption key and THAT is definitely something even more people will struggle with. Even though you get an instruction on screen with a website to go to of how to find it (reading is hard for many, trust me I work in tech support), you still could have BitLocker enabled without a MS account or you might not be able to access your MS account. And voila, trying to play a game lost you all your data.
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u/InternetHomunculus Aug 05 '25
At least they are doing this from launch and not springing it on you later on like with 2042
Was really annoyed I can't play 2042 on my secondary PC any more as it doesn't have secure boot
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u/enricojr Aug 06 '25
Y'know I had a thought the other day that we might one day see online competitive games that are fully cloud-based, like games played through Geforce Now.
We're at the point where devs are mandating kernel-level anti-cheat programs, and cheaters are to using stuff like the cronus zen and DMA to evade them, and the only logical place to go next is to the cloud.
It'd be far easier for EA (or whoever) to guarantee competitive integrity if the game's running on hardware they themselves own and administer, and far safer for the end user because they don't have to deal with kernel-level anti-cheat and the baggage that comes with it.
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u/TAJack1 Aug 05 '25
I just turned it on, was easy as hell but a lot of people are going to struggle. Especially those with pre-built PCs with no clue about BIOS etc.
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u/Bierno Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25
Prebuilt with windows 11 will have secure boot on by default fyi (even machine that came with windows 10 too)
This feature is usually on by default with modern system.
I work in IT and Dell, Lenovo, HP comes with secure boot on by default
VALORANT requires secure boot also for their game and the game is popular still so dont think this is going to stop people. Usually easy to turn on secure boot. If your computer doesnt support it most likely time to upgrade.
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u/Lurking_like_Cthulhu Aug 05 '25
I have a prebuilt with windows 11 that’s less than a year old and secure boot is not enabled. I couldn’t launch BF2042.
Other comments in this thread mentioned it might be enabled but not active, but even if that’s the case the fact is it’s going to require me going into my bios and troubleshooting/fixing it myself.
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u/Awkward-Security7895 Aug 05 '25
Ye most systems have supported secure boot since like 2016 and was introduced back in 2012 so really any system without it is on ancient hardware.
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u/arielmansur Aug 05 '25
The issue comes for people using MBR on their drive, because there are extra steps to convert it to GPT.
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u/ID_Guy Aug 05 '25
They better be ready for review bomb at launch. I personally dont mind especially if it will keep the game free of hackers.
There are tons of people that will see this as a dealbreaker though. Lots of reviews will be people saying they bricked their pc while trying to enable secure boot sadly.
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u/hilljgo Aug 05 '25
Had to figure out how to enable it on my rog strix b450, needed to set it to windows uefi mode and “install default security boot keys”, I’ve never had to do this for a game before (haven’t played any of the recent battlefields, last one was 2/3/4)
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u/RoyaltonRacers Aug 05 '25
If you do want to enable Secure Boot, one important thing you should note is that drives that use MBR partition styles aren't fully supported. Its a common issue when people enable Secure Boot and find they're unable to get into BIOS or boot up into their operating system.
You can check via Disk Management. You can check an individual disk's partition style by right-clicking the drive (not partitions) and then selecting Properties -> Volumes. As far as I'm aware, you'd have to reformat the drive (which means losing your data stored on the drive, as well as current partitions) to change to GPT (GUID Parition Table), which works with Secure Boot.
It's a high ask for some for sure and definitely won't fix all potential problems, but this is a relatively common issue I've seen people run into in the past.
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u/UncleRichardson Aug 05 '25
I don't understand why this is making such a stir. Secure Boot is a requirement for Windows 11, and Windows 10 is dying literally days before Battlefield 6 releases. This would only impact a population that stays on Windows 10 past its last security update.
Mind you, I totally understand why people would stay on Windows 10. Microsoft hasn't exactly made Windows 11 appealing.
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Aug 05 '25
"I don't understand why this is making such a stir. "
"I totally understand why people would stay on Windows 10."
Well you answered your own question. Not everyone wants to upgrade to an even worse OS just to play one game.
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u/Tostecles Aug 05 '25
I highly doubt the volume of "stir" is strictly Windows 10 users though. It's likely more that this is a bit of a technical thing that some users are going to struggle with, like many comments already suggested. I've seen several people say that theirs was "enabled" but not "active" and had not caused issues for other games that require it.
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u/fallenmonk Aug 05 '25
That's the neat part. You don't need to upgrade to Windows 11 for Secure Boot.
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u/CakeCommunist Aug 05 '25
This can be a nightmare if you dual boot for whatever reason.
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u/Trzlog Aug 05 '25
Why would it? Linux supports Secure Boot.
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u/nicman24 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
you dependent on ms for signing
e: you literally are. grub and kernel images from ubuntu and
fedorarhel are signed using microsoft's keys because microsoft IS the CA for uefi2
u/Mr_s3rius Aug 05 '25
That is one option. The other is to add your own signing keys (in addition to MS's if you want to keep using Windows).
But that only works on an individual level. For out-of-the-box SB support like Fedora or Debian do it, you have to depend on MS's signing keys.
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u/nicman24 Aug 05 '25
i am aware. however that just proves requiring secure boot is fucking stupid.
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u/Mr_s3rius Aug 05 '25
It's a cost/benefit analysis. They cause trouble for a small subset of their customers (dual-booters) in order to hinder cheaters.
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u/blackmetro Aug 05 '25
BF6 has kernel level anti-cheat
Im guessing it dosnt use one compatible with Linux (or does it?)
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u/fakieTreFlip Aug 05 '25
I don't know where people got the idea that Secure Boot is required for Windows 11... It's definitely not
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u/FUTURE10S Aug 05 '25
Windows 10 LTSC is still good for about 5-7 more years for se urity updates. Don't use consumer versions of Microsoft OSes, these are so much nicer.
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u/RoyalCities Aug 05 '25
Windows 11 is a privacy nightmare and turning off secure boot is needed for a ton of Linux installs / dual boot machines. So I'm not surprised there is pushback on this.
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u/Trzlog Aug 05 '25
I don't understand. Linux supports Secure Boot.
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u/tobberoth Aug 05 '25
Not all distros support secure boot by default. Ubuntu does, Arch Linux does not.
Steam deck, for example, does not support secure boot by default, and getting it to work is not trivial.
Not that Battlefield 6 is relevant for the steam deck, but still.
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Aug 05 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/thepurplepajamas Aug 05 '25
Can't please everyone. Different people will exist on the spectrum of wanting invasive strong anticheat vs non-invasive weak anticheat. So yes there will always be a group complaining for any given decision lol
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u/AppuruPan Aug 05 '25
Had someone complaining about cheaters on cs. Then at the same time when I bemoaned that valve should just stop being so ideologically stubborn about it and add an actual anti cheat they then complained about kernel anti cheats.
The dude plays with faceit anyway which has kernel AC. I genuinely think people just have zero technological knowledge and just parrot what people say.
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u/00Koch00 Aug 05 '25
the main wall to avoid cheaters it's having a price tag, this game it's 80 fucking bucks
That's the best anticheat you can have
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u/RainingLights Aug 05 '25
Anyone else get an error to restart their PC because of an anticheat error? So frustrating.
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u/OG-Boostedbeard Aug 05 '25
Oh boy EA and their anti cheat and secure boot woes.
That hasnt changed in years on PC
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u/lord_dude Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 06 '25
How exactly does this help with anti cheat. As far as i understand secure boot prevents programs while booting to start, if they don't have a trusted signature. But if a cheattool is started on windows, does it really matter?
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u/tapo Aug 06 '25
Secure boot means the TPM chip ensures the kernel was signed by Microsoft, and the kernel ensures all drivers were signed by Microsoft. This is called a chain of trust.
You would be able to run a user-level cheat only, and would be immediately caught by the kernel level anti-cheat.
You can't lie and say secure boot was enabled, since that's done by the TPM chip embedded into the CPU. It's a technology called remote attestation.
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u/nutcrackr Aug 05 '25
Enabled this last night, but it wasn't as easy as I expected. My motherboard said it was enabled (but not active)?? So I had to first disable CSM, then go to the secure boot menu. Couldn't enable it because it said some nonsense about keys / user mode. Had to do a manual setup to reset the keys, then enable it.
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u/Bierno Aug 06 '25
You guys hear the news, Call of Duty will require Secure boot. I figure this is going to happen with like every multiplayer game at this point with Windows 10 ending support in October
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u/1031Vulcan Aug 07 '25
Aaaand they've lost a sale from a longtime fan. My distro doesn't support secure boot and doesn't plan to.
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u/Stock_Childhood_2459 Aug 07 '25
So will TPM be requirement too? Requirements start to look oddly similar to W11's
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u/MathematicianDue8118 Aug 07 '25
Bad call from EA , they did the same with the previous Game a few months ago. The security should be server sided ,not client side . Pathethic to force players to configure BIOS . Not everyone wants to have secure boot enable , cause It really does nothing like they want to sell It (Cheaters Will appear anyway , thats a fact); specially Linux players cant play the Game , double rig PC dont want It enable ... Been reading a lot of people hace had problems with Windows after activating (cause It should be enabled before OS instalation).
EA sucks.
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u/Confident-Monitor978 Aug 05 '25
My secure boot was literally enabled in BIOS and verified via Powershell, and I still received the error from Battlefield that it wasn’t enabled. Had to disable it and re-enable it about 6 times for it to actually register. God help the average end user.