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Call of Duty and Battlefield 6 will both require Secure Boot on Windows
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They could easily identify the worst hackers just based on the game play data without needing to actually confirm that they have cheats installed. Snapping between spread out people to get a half dozen head shots in a quarter second? Hacking. Locking on to someone behind a wall? Hacking. Hacks that nullify recoil? They should be able to tell by unrealistically precise counter movements. Sure, games can occasionally have network issues that result in these kinds of things but if someone does it regularly then it isn't a networking thing.The problem with this detection method is that you occasionally run into honest players catching bans for being *legitimately too good at the game*. While rare, there are some players who are accurate enough with their tracking that even professional players would assume they're cheating, and end up getting banned because the developers decided nobody should ever be that good at the game. This ends up putting a skill ceiling on a game, which is uhhealthy for a competitive game.
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Man... *Call of Duty: United Offense* was the game my squadron played all the time while we were deployed to Iraq in 2007. Someone had a cracked copy they brought with them and we installed it on all our computers in the squadron (we were an IT squadron). Once a day, around lunchtime, we'd shut down the whole squadron for about 30 minutes. We'd hang signs on our doors that said we were closed for "simulated warfare training." Then we'd jump into a massive free-for-all match and shoot everything that moved until there was one person left standing. Someone had dozens of custom maps people had made online, so we always had some new and unique map to play with. I don't miss Iraq, but I do miss those days. CoD was my favorite FPS series back in the day. Now it's complete garbage. *Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2* (the 2009 original, not the 2022 reboot) was the first time I felt like the franchise wasn't trying anymore. I mostly played the campaign mode and that was the first campaign that was basically just a carbon copy of the previous game. Same exact plot, same exact ending, just a new villain who took over for the villain in the previous *Modern Warfare* game. *Black Ops* was kind of weird, but not that bad. However, I completely lost interest when trying to play *Black Ops 2* and haven't bought a new game since. I hear they're up to *Black Ops 6* now?My friends and I started on PS3 with CoD ModernWarfare. Playing 4 player splitscreen was fun! Then later when internet around here got better, we played MW2 and Black Ops. A few played BlackOps 2 and I think only one stayed for MW3. I think I even got the Wii version of black ops lol
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just picked it up for $4 and (after the annoying Punkbuster install) it holds up really well, especially for being 12yo. definitely scratches the Battlefield itch so I don't feel so tempted to buy BF6
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Archive: https://archive.ph/2025.08.06-204234/https://www.theverge.com/news/720007/call-of-duty-pc-anti-cheat-secure-boot-windows-black-ops-7Well shit, I was looking forward to bf6
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Secure boot requires OS kernel to be digitally signed so that’s just another way to prevent tampering. It’s not like this or any other game will be doing anything other than checking if it’s on because there’s not that much else it can be used for. Secure boot is annoying as hell if you use anything other than Windows though.You can load your own keys and sign whatever you want. It's not going to prevent anyone but the most unsophisticated of cheaters. What it does is prevent malicious code from being injected early in the boot, it doesn't prevent users from loading whatever code they want early in boot.
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You can load your own keys and sign whatever you want. It's not going to prevent anyone but the most unsophisticated of cheaters. What it does is prevent malicious code from being injected early in the boot, it doesn't prevent users from loading whatever code they want early in boot.
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I mean, this is fine. Secure Boot is on everything motherboard from the last 12 years, there are very few reasons not to have it enabled and those reasons are usually edge case scenarios. Would absolutely take this over a kernel level driver.
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The problem with this detection method is that you occasionally run into honest players catching bans for being *legitimately too good at the game*. While rare, there are some players who are accurate enough with their tracking that even professional players would assume they're cheating, and end up getting banned because the developers decided nobody should ever be that good at the game. This ends up putting a skill ceiling on a game, which is uhhealthy for a competitive game.
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Archive: https://archive.ph/2025.08.06-204234/https://www.theverge.com/news/720007/call-of-duty-pc-anti-cheat-secure-boot-windows-black-ops-7
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EA Gets hacked and all the extra info they have been storing on me goes right to the hackers. It's also a huge back door they could sell to shady 3 letter agencies.
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Can you really sign your own modified Windows kernel or drivers? I don’t think that’s how cryptography works.I'm not sure about Windows specifically, I just know you can load your own keys onto the mobo. In general, a cryptographic signature is just metadata tacked onto a file, so presumably yes, you could sign the kernel yourself and load your key so Secure Boot works. The way Linux distros generally work (e.g. [Debian](https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot#What_is_UEFI_Secure_Boot.3F)) is to use a shim binary and chain load into their own kernel binary. An exerpt: > Starting with Debian version 10 ("Buster"), Debian supports UEFI Secure Boot by employing a small UEFI loader called shim which is signed by Microsoft and embeds Debian's signing keys. This allows Debian to sign its own binaries without requiring further signatures from Microsoft. So even if signing the Windows kernel doesn't work (I don't see why it wouldn't), you could use a loader shim like Debian does to not require loading your own keys. To be fair, I haven't read the details of Secure Boot specifically to know how it's done, I'm just going based on my understanding of PGP (about how signing works), early kernel boot, and high level details about Secure Boot. I'm sure someone sophisticated enough to design kernel-level game cheats could figure out how to make Secure Boot happy without a ton of effort from users. Secure Boot isn't designed to prevent users from doing things, it merely prevents malicious code from being loaded at boot (i.e. code that doesn't have access to the keys loaded onto the Secure Boot module).
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I'm not sure about Windows specifically, I just know you can load your own keys onto the mobo. In general, a cryptographic signature is just metadata tacked onto a file, so presumably yes, you could sign the kernel yourself and load your key so Secure Boot works. The way Linux distros generally work (e.g. [Debian](https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot#What_is_UEFI_Secure_Boot.3F)) is to use a shim binary and chain load into their own kernel binary. An exerpt: > Starting with Debian version 10 ("Buster"), Debian supports UEFI Secure Boot by employing a small UEFI loader called shim which is signed by Microsoft and embeds Debian's signing keys. This allows Debian to sign its own binaries without requiring further signatures from Microsoft. So even if signing the Windows kernel doesn't work (I don't see why it wouldn't), you could use a loader shim like Debian does to not require loading your own keys. To be fair, I haven't read the details of Secure Boot specifically to know how it's done, I'm just going based on my understanding of PGP (about how signing works), early kernel boot, and high level details about Secure Boot. I'm sure someone sophisticated enough to design kernel-level game cheats could figure out how to make Secure Boot happy without a ton of effort from users. Secure Boot isn't designed to prevent users from doing things, it merely prevents malicious code from being loaded at boot (i.e. code that doesn't have access to the keys loaded onto the Secure Boot module).
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You mean [this certificate](https://lwn.net/Articles/1029767/)? The one which will expire next year and leave many old machines with Secure Boot enabled, unbootable?Unbootable w/o changes, yes, assuming hardware vendors actually respect the expiration date. But that's completely separate from my point. Regardless of the solution they pick for that particular problem, users can _still_ add their own keys to Secure Boot and do whatever they want.
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Every Riot game requires Secure Boot for Vanguard to work. It's not unique to those two games. And what the fuck would they want with your computer anyways?
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They are using this to leverage their way into control over your system. They are trying to become the iOS of PC's, where you can't install or run anything Microsoft didn't collect protection money on.
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I'm not sure about Windows specifically, I just know you can load your own keys onto the mobo. In general, a cryptographic signature is just metadata tacked onto a file, so presumably yes, you could sign the kernel yourself and load your key so Secure Boot works. The way Linux distros generally work (e.g. [Debian](https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot#What_is_UEFI_Secure_Boot.3F)) is to use a shim binary and chain load into their own kernel binary. An exerpt: > Starting with Debian version 10 ("Buster"), Debian supports UEFI Secure Boot by employing a small UEFI loader called shim which is signed by Microsoft and embeds Debian's signing keys. This allows Debian to sign its own binaries without requiring further signatures from Microsoft. So even if signing the Windows kernel doesn't work (I don't see why it wouldn't), you could use a loader shim like Debian does to not require loading your own keys. To be fair, I haven't read the details of Secure Boot specifically to know how it's done, I'm just going based on my understanding of PGP (about how signing works), early kernel boot, and high level details about Secure Boot. I'm sure someone sophisticated enough to design kernel-level game cheats could figure out how to make Secure Boot happy without a ton of effort from users. Secure Boot isn't designed to prevent users from doing things, it merely prevents malicious code from being loaded at boot (i.e. code that doesn't have access to the keys loaded onto the Secure Boot module).
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Fuck cheaters. I support this. I have no issues with the potential vulnerability concerns to reduce cheating. I can't even remember the last time kernel level anti-cheats resulted in data exploitation.
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Archive: https://archive.ph/2025.08.06-204234/https://www.theverge.com/news/720007/call-of-duty-pc-anti-cheat-secure-boot-windows-black-ops-7Come join the community I made recently specifically for battlefield like games made by indie developers such as the superb ww2 battlefield-like **Easy Red 2** ! !indiefields@sopuli.xyz
