Hero image: Apex Legends screenshot. Image: Respawn / Electronic Arts
Apex Legends is changing the software that watches for cheaters on PC. From 29 September, the game drops Easy Anti-Cheat — the Epic Games tool it has used until now — and moves to EA’s own Javelin Anticheat.
Respawn set it out in a post on EA’s site on 24 September. Here’s what it says, and what it leaves out.
What changes on Tuesday
The switch is PC only. When it goes live, PC players will be asked to download a game update, and launching Apex afterwards moves them to Javelin automatically — in the post’s words, “simple as that!”
The reason given is control. Moving to Javelin “will give our anticheat teams greater visibility into emerging threats and more flexibility to develop and improve detections as cheating evolves.” The post also thanks the Easy Anti-Cheat team at Epic for “a long and fruitful partnership”.
The post gives a date for the switch but not a time of day, so there is no confirmed hour for the change in Australia.
No Secure Boot, for now
Players who know Javelin from other EA games may remember having to go into their PC’s BIOS to turn on Secure Boot. The post says that isn’t the case for Apex — but the wording is “at this time”, which leaves the door open.
EA’s own year-in-review for Javelin, published on 10 September, shows where that door leads. It says configurable Secure Boot requirements started with Battlefield 2042, that over 4.8 million players have since enabled it, and that Battlefield 6 added a TPM 2.0 requirement on top.
What Javelin actually is
The same review lays out the numbers, claiming 20 titles protected, 57.1 million players covered and 26.7 million cheat attempts prevented, with a detection accuracy it puts at over 99%.
It’s also direct about how deep the software goes. EA writes that it operates “at kernel level because detecting external cheats requires it, not because we want deeper access.” It also says Javelin only runs while a protected game is running, and removes itself once every Javelin game has been uninstalled.
Consoles are a separate fight
Javelin doesn’t touch PlayStation, Xbox or Switch 2 players. For consoles, the Apex post points to server-side detection and data models aimed at console-specific cheats, with no new system announced.
That fits a pattern. Earlier this month we looked at how Riot and Activision both went after cheaters — and at the market that supplies them — and EA’s review aims at the same trade, saying “We see cheat subscriptions averaging $20-150/month, creating a lucrative black market we’re working to dismantle through technical, legal, and platform partnership approaches.”
For Apex on PC, the only thing players need to do on Tuesday is take the update, and whether Secure Boot follows later is something the post chooses not to answer.
Source: EA – EA Javelin Anticheat is Coming to Apex Legends, EA – Raising the Bar: A Year of Progress for EA Javelin Anticheat