FIFA 23 will have many innovations on the PC this year: Not only are PC players finally catching up with Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in terms of technology, they also get real protection against cheaters for the first time.
EA relies on a new anti-cheat technology called EAAC, which will make its debut in FIFA 23 and according to the developers absolutely necessary
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EA Sports launches fight against PC cheaters
In the latest Deep Dive blog post EA has introduced its new anti-cheat technology EA AntiCheat (EAAC), which is to be used for the first time in the PC version of FIFA 23. Other EA titles such as Apex Legends currently rely on the widespread Easy AntiCheat.
What exactly is EAAC? EAAC is an anti-cheat and anti-tamper solution developed in-house at Electronic Arts. Similar to Valorant’s and Call of Duty: Warzone’s anti-cheat systems, EAAC works at the kernel level. At Valorant, this caused privacy and system security concerns for many players:
Valorant’s Anti-Cheat-Programm
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EA promises that players don’t have to worry in this regard, as the program’s access is restricted despite the kernel level:
Protecting player privacy is a priority for our Game Security & Anti-Cheat team – after all, we are gamers too! EAAC only looks at what it needs for anti-cheat purposes in our games and we have limited the information EAAC collects. If you have a process on your PC trying to interact with our game, EAAC could see that and react to it. However, everything else is taboo.
Our Game Security & Anti-Cheat team is made up of some of the best security engineers in the world, and we’re passionate about ensuring our software doesn’t introduce security vulnerabilities. Our anti-cheat engineering team conducts daily testing and we continuously conduct internal security and penetration testing against EAAC.
EAAC should also have no negative impact on performancesince EA claims to ensure that EAAC as performant and lightweight as possible
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In the blog, however, EA does not provide an answer as to whether Mods detected as cheats will. There is a lively modding community on the PC that provides FIFA with missing (national) teams, new leagues, gameplay improvements and more every year.
Anti-Cheat EA absolutely necessary
EA itself says that the new anti-cheat at the kernel level absolutely necessary
because more and more cheats have been working in kernel mode in recent years. Therefore, the only reliable way to detect and block them is for EAAC to work there as well.
The fact that FIFA 23 offers crossplay between PC, Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5 for the first time will certainly also have played a major role in this decision – after all, console players should still be able to play without cheating opponents.
All important information about crossplay and the existing restrictions can be found here:
more on the subject
FIFA 23 introduces crossplay for the first time, but there are significant limitations
From our own experience we can confirm that at least on the PC there were regular cheaters in past FIFA titles. With their hacks, they were able, among other things, to force a disconnection in order to avoid defeats. If EA can keep its security and privacy promises and mods are still possible, we consider EAAC a welcome addition.
