Remember the days when you could just fire up a game on your PC and not require some BIOS-level tinkering to do so? Apparently those days are done for if you’re hoping to get into the multiplayer PC open beta of Battlefield 6, which as many gamers are discovering first-hand, forces them to use the Secure Boot feature of Windows 10 and 11, which requires some BIOS finagling to engage.
EA terms this requirement as one that helps its anti-cheat software Javelin to “detect and remove bad actors, resulting in fewer cheaters and a better experience for players.” And to EA’s credit, there is a guide on how this is all done while players are also marshaling together to help one another out. It’s still no less intimidating considering it deals with steps and terms that most PC users are likely unfamiliar with, and for others, the requirement is a non-starter. “I noped out as soon as I saw you have to mess with bios. $70 saved thanks to the beta,” reads one such reaction.
Still, it would appear that those skeeved out by the Secure Boot requirement are in a numerical minority, as the open beta has already hit over 330K concurrent players on Steam alone as of this writing, which in turn has led to people sitting in queues to get into the test. And this is just for the “early access” portion; the test will open further on August 9th and 10th, so we expect those numbers to continue to climb in the coming days.
Meanwhile, DICE Studios has been working to keep issues to a minimum, first addressing a queuing bug that has brought wait times to “suitable levels” and working to correct a matchmaking bug.
