Battlefield 2042 Secure Boot is still locking out regular players, and DICE hasn’t fixed it yet
There’s a serious Secure Boot backlash happening. Most of the recent Battlefield 2042 reviews on Steam are negative because players just can’t get into the game due to the new anti-cheat.
Once again, something meant to stop cheaters has ended up causing more headaches than it fixed. Even tough DICE is busy with Battlefield 6, they rolled out a new update for Battlefield 2042 in May that introduced a Secure Boot requirement. The goal was to crack down on increasingly advanced cheats that try to interfere with the game during the Windows boot process. But instead of just locking out cheaters, the change has unintentionally locked out some regular players too.
Battlefield 2042’s anti-cheat update is hurting the wrong players
This update puts Battlefield 2042 in the same boat as games like Valorant, which also use Secure Boot to beef up their anti-cheat systems. EA made the move after the serious cheating issues with Apex Legends incident in March 2024 – even pro players got hacked during a tournament.
But now, a lot of regular Battlefield 2042 players are stuck dealing with the fallout, unable to launch the game thanks to confusing BIOS settings or system compatibility problems. The devs were supposed to step in and sort this out, but so far, nothing's been done, the issue is still hanging around.
Next update to the game will arrive tomorrow, on Tuesday 17th, but there’s no mention of this problem in the bug fixes. Instead, it looks like they’ve focused more on the new Mass Effect bundle and a bunch of weapon tweaks, rather than dealing with what players actually need right now.
Battlefield 2042’s recent reviews on Steam are mostly negative, and if things don’t get fixed soon, the player base will probably keep shrinking. The last big spike was back in October 2024, and it’s been steadily dropping off ever since.
