EA Sports has announced a new anti-cheat and anti-temper solution which will be launched for FIFA 23 on PC. EA AntiCheat (EAAC) uses kernel-mode technology, making it virtually impossible for cheat techniques to be inserted.
What is Kernal-mode technology?
A Kernel-mode operating system has direct access to all aspects of hardware and can detect cheats that other anti-cheat solutions are incapable of detecting.
Elise Murphy, EA’s Senior Director of Game Security & Anti-Cheat described the necessity for anti-cheat software on games that are highly competitive and employ several different online modes.
In an blog post, titled “A Deep Dive on EA anticheat for PC“, Murphy stated “At Electronic Arts we are committed to creating a safe and fair experience for all of our players.”
Murphy said that PC cheat developers are increasingly moving into the Kernal. Therefore, kernal-mode protections are necessary to ensure fair play and to tackle PC cheat developers on an equal playing field.
“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.”
The platform claims that third-party anti-cheat solutions can be opaque to it’s teams and prevent them from implementing privacy controls or customisations to provide more details for EA-specific game modes.
Although EEAC won’t be used in all EA titles, it could be potentially useful for other competitive titles. Murphy stated that EEAC will only be active while the game itself is running, so players don’t need to worry about the software interfering with other PC games. It’s also not designed so as to not interfere with gameplay so FIFA 23 should appear largely the same for most users.
He further added that, this is a good place to start, for games with many online modes, such as FIFA 23, which are competative, kernal-level anti-cheat is required.
