EA Anticheat and Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2

Over the past few months, we’ve identified an issue affecting our Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 PC players. As part of our ongoing efforts to create a safe and fair experience for all players, we will be rolling out an update in March 2024 that will transition PVZGW2 for PC over to EA Anticheat. This update will address the stats corruption exploit affecting some of our PC players. 

With this update, we will be ending support for Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 for PC on Windows 7, 8, 8.1 operating systems. Additionally, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 will not run on the native Steam OS for Steamdeck with this update. 

That means that we can no longer guarantee functionality of the game while playing on these operating systems after this date.

Microsoft has already ended security updates and technical support for Windows 7 in January 2020 and for Windows 8.1 in January 2023, and we highly recommend updating to the latest supported version of Windows, so you can continue to enjoy the game.

For more information on keeping your system up-to-date we recommend reading the following articles:

https://help.ea.com/en/help/ea/ea-app/update-operating-system
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/get-windows-11

We’ve outlined more details below in case you have further questions. 

FAQ

What is EA anticheat?

EA anticheat is a kernel-mode anti-cheat and anti-tamper solution developed in-house at Electronic Arts. PC cheat developers have increasingly moved into the kernel, so we need to have kernel-mode protections to ensure fair play and tackle PC cheat developers on an even playing field. 

As tech-inclined video gamers ourselves, it is important to us to make sure that any kernel anti-cheat included in our games acts with a strong focus on the privacy and security of our gamers that use a PC. 

Why are you moving to EA anticheat?

Third party anti-cheat solutions are often opaque to our teams, and prevent us from implementing additional privacy controls or customizations that provide greater accuracy and granularity for EA-specific game modes. With EA anticheat we have full stack ownership of the security & privacy posture, so we can fix security issues as soon as they may arise.

Why is kernel level anti-cheat needed?

This varies on a game-by-game basis. For games that are highly competitive and contain many online modes such as Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2, kernel-mode protection is absolutely vital. When cheat programs operate in kernel space, they can make their cheat functionally invisible to anti-cheat solutions that live in user-mode. 

Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a large increase in cheats and cheat techniques operating in kernel-mode, so the only reliable way to detect and block these is to continue to have our anti-cheat operate there as well. 

Are the System Requirements for Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 changing?

Yes, Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 will no longer be supported. We will support Windows 10 Latest Update and Windows 11Additionally, Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 will not run on the native Steam OS for Steamdeck with this update.

Will EA anticheat degrade gameplay?

No. We’ve conducted extensive internal and independent performance and stability assessments to ensure EA anticheat is as performant and lightweight as possible. EA anticheat will have negligible impact on your gameplay.  

Does EA anticheat run when I start my PC, or only when the game is running?

EA anticheat only runs when a game with EA anticheat protection included is running. All anti-cheat processes shut down when the game does.

Does EA anticheat stay on my PC if I uninstall Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2? Can I uninstall it if I want?

If you have uninstalled all of your EA games that have EA anticheat protection, EA anticheat will automatically uninstall and remove itself from your PC. It can also be manually uninstalled by you at any time you choose and will be completely removed from your PC. 

Please note that if you uninstall EA anticheat, any games that require EA anticheat protection (like Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2) will not be playable until EA anticheat is reinstalled. If you would like to reinstall EA anticheat we’ve made it as easy as possible to do so, with simple prompts in the game launch process.

Does EA anticheat let EA see my browsing history, personal files, or things like that?

Player privacy is a top concern of our Game Security & Anti-Cheat team - after all, we’re players as well! EA anticheat will only look at what it needs to for anti-cheat purposes in our games and we have limited the information EA anticheat  collects. If you have a process on your PC that is trying to interact with our game, EA anticheat could see that and respond. However, everything else is off limits. 

EA anticheat does not gather any information about your browsing history, applications that are not connected to EA games, or anything that is not directly related to anti-cheat protection. We’ve worked with independent, 3rd party computer security and privacy services firms to ensure EA anticheat operates with data privacy top of mind.

For the information that EA anticheat does collect, we strive to maintain privacy where possible through a cryptographic process called hashing to create unique identifiers and discard the original information. Overall, EA anticheat use of your computer and data collection is consistent with EA’s User Agreement and Privacy and Cookie Policy.

How do I know that EA anticheat is not introducing any security vulnerabilities to my PC?

Our Game Security & Anti-Cheat team is composed of some of the best security engineers in the world, and we are passionate about ensuring that our software does not cause any security vulnerabilities. Our anti-cheat engineering team performs daily testing and we continuously run security and penetration tests against EA anticheat internally. 

But don’t just trust our word on this.  We’ve also worked with independent, 3rd party security and privacy assessors to validate EA anticheat does not degrade the security posture of your PC and to ensure strict data privacy boundaries.

Although we’re confident that we’ve taken every possible precaution, we are monitoring and listening to any reports received to make sure that potential issues get addressed as quickly as possible.  

I think I found a security vulnerability with EA anticheat, who can I contact?

If you believe you’ve found a vulnerability, please let us know by following our Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure process by emailing secure@ea.com right away. We take potential security issues seriously, and will work to fix them as quickly as we can.

Where can I get help if I run into issues with EA anticheat?

If you need help to install and troubleshoot EA anticheat on your PC then you can visit our EA Help page.

Still Having Issues?

We got you. Hit up our Plants vs. Zombies  Answers HQ  section where you can report bugs or issues for a member of the team to check out. Or hit up our friends at EA Help for one-on-one support. 

This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible. For more information, please refer to EA’s Online Service Updates at https://www.ea.com/service-updates.

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*REQUIRES Plants vs. Zombies™ Garden Warfare 2 ON THE PLAYSTATION 4, PC, or XBOX ONE ( SOLD SEPARATELY), ALL Content UPDATES, PERSISTENT INTERNET CONNECTION, EA Account and up to 32 GB of storage to play (storage requirements subject to change).

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