DICE has confirmed Battlefield 2042 will be using Easy Anti-Cheat in their hacker-preventing efforts. But is this a good thing?
Last week, DICE announced that it will be using Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) for Battlefield 2042 via its official blog.
The announcement was praised among the Battlefield community. This is because EAC has seemingly also been successful for the likes of EA’s own Apex Legends and Fortnite.
I wanted to investigate how effective EAC is though and after speaking to several people familiar with EAC, be that developers or actual hackers, there were some pretty interesting pros and cons.
Is Battlefield 2042’s Easy Anti-Cheat Good?
Many people consider Easy Anti-Cheat to be a decent anti-cheat system. Plus, it has great tools for developers to use in order to crack down on cheaters.
Fortnite does a great job of implementing the tools at the developer’s disposal. Although some hackers may slide through the gaps, a lot of them are captured in large ban waves.
So, fortunately for us casual and non-cheating players, EAC will catch the majority of cheaters that use readily available hacks.
Battlefield 2042 Easy Anti-Cheat Cons
What’s concerning about Easy Anti-Cheat is that although the tools are great at capturing publicly available cheats (from the first couple pages of google for example), it will not automatically capture other cheats.
Epic Games does a great job with Fortnite in capturing cheaters that can fly under the radar so to speak. However, Apex Legends’ implementation of EAC isn’t as in-depth.
In order for EAC to work effectively, DICE and EA will need to essentially be catching cheaters manually with the tools EAC provides.
DICE has already stated that it is committed to “fair play” in Battlefield 2042, but if Apex Legends, which is one of EA’s biggest earners enables hackers to go under the radar, then it is a cause for concern with Battlefield 2042.
A big defense to hacking in Battlefield 2042 is the game is behind a paywall, whereas Apex Legends is not. So I tried dismissing my concerns by asking if Battlefield 2042 not being free to play will prevent hackers from coming to the game.
One source said that $70 at a time isn’t that big of an issue to hackers either, as there are many ways to purchase titles at $10 at a time.
Using VPNs to purchase from other regions, buying hacked or stolen accounts etc. are all a part of the “hacking process”.
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Battlefield 2042 Easy Anti-Cheat TLDR
Ultimately hackers will also slip through the net when it comes to anti-cheat measures. However, it will come down to EA and DICE to use EAC’s tools to catch as many as possible.
If EA neglects or doesn’t use these anti-cheat tools to their full potential, then Battlefield 2042 could have a hacking problem.
Of course, that’s also not to mention Battlefield 2042’s Hazard Zone, with a somewhat old piece of news from one source of mine suggesting the mode could be free to play.
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