A Deep Dive on EA anticheat for PC
By Elise Murphy - Sr. Director, Game Security & Anti-Cheat
At Electronic Arts we are committed to creating a safe and fair experience for all of our players. As outlined in our Positive Player Charter, we ask everyone to play within the rules of the game and refrain from tampering or using cheats. Our Game Security & Anti-Cheat team has been hard at work building and supporting technologies that enable us to best protect our players' interest in fair play, and that’s why we are announcing the launch of EA anticheat with FIFA 23 for PC this fall.
EA anti-cheat 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.
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. With that in mind, let’s tackle a few of the common questions you may have.
FAQ
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 like FIFA 23, 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 have our anti-cheat operate there as well.
With FIFA 23, we’ll see new and exciting cross-play features. In addition to EA anti-cheat protecting our PC players from cheaters, our console players who match with PC opponents will also be protected from cheaters operating on PC platforms.
Not every game is competitive multiplayer, is this going to be in all EA games?
No. We’re working with our game studios to determine anti-cheat needs for each project. For single player-only titles, or titles without competitive ladders or leaderboards, the cheat landscape differs. Depending on the title and type of game, we may implement other anti-cheat technology, such as user-mode protections, or even forgo leveraging anticheat technology altogether in some cases, opting instead to design the game to be resilient against certain types of cheats.
I only play single player modes on games like FIFA, why do I need EA anticheat?
Cheat developers use single player game modes to reverse-engineer a game, or experiment with tampered game files to help them develop a cheat then bring those alterations back into online multiplayer game modes. In addition to preventing active cheating during online play, EA anticheat also prevents cheat developers from using single player modes in these ways. Protecting single player game modes is necessary to hamper cheat development.
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 FIFA? 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 FIFA 23) 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.
