Battlefield 6 Devs Hope Console Players Keep Crossplay On Despite PC Cheaters

As Battlefield 6 nears its October 10, 2025, launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, Ripple Effect is encouraging console players to keep crossplay enabled despite the presence of cheaters in the PC community. The development team is relying heavily on anti-cheat systems and dedicated teams to maintain fair play, but acknowledges the issue cannot be fully eliminated.

Technical director Christian Buhl was candid about the challenge of handling cheaters in a massive multiplayer shooter.

“So, we're doing a lot on the PC side to clamp down on cheating as much as possible,” Buhl said. “We have a whole team within Battlefield dedicated to anti-cheat, which includes engineers, analysts who are reviewing things and banning players, and figuring out what the latest cheats are. We have another whole dedicated team at EA to anti-cheat that we work closely with.” — Christian Buhl

Buhl also pointed to Battlefield 6’s anti-cheat system, Javelin, as a central pillar of their approach, along with secure boot technology. He admitted, however, that some exploits will inevitably bypass defenses.

“Now, we can never win against cheaters, right? Cheaters will always be there. It's a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. I can't promise that there will be zero cheaters if you're playing against PC players. That's just simply not possible, but I can say that we are being extremely aggressive. We see this as critical to the success of — to the health of — the game.” — Christian Buhl

The concerns are not without basis. During Battlefield 6’s open beta in August, cheaters were already active. EA stated that by August 8, just one day after early access for the beta began, it had blocked 330,000 cheat attempts. This highlighted both the scale of the challenge and the aggressive response from the developers.

Senior console combat designer Matthew Nickerson explained that crossplay will be on by default for all players when they first load into the game. Console players worried about PC cheaters will have the option to disable it, limiting matches to their platform communities. Ripple Effect, however, hopes the majority of console players will leave the setting on.

Buhl stressed the importance of confidence in the systems being put in place:

“You don't want to play a game and feel like a bunch of people on the other side are cheating. I hope console players feel confident enough in what we're doing for cheating on the PC side that they don't feel like they want to turn crossplay off just for that reason. If they do want to, that is an available option for them, but we think it's super important for PC and console players to be confident that most of the people that they're playing with or against are not cheating, and we're putting a huge amount of effort into that.” — Christian Buhl

Battlefield 6 has faced a turbulent pre-launch cycle. EA has dealt with widespread leaks despite NDA restrictions on playtesters, with much of the content originating from the Battlefield Labs program. Recent leaks included a ten-minute video of a Season 1 map, which appeared to confirm earlier speculation of multiple California-based maps. The leaks have frustrated developers but maintained strong community interest ahead of release.

Despite the ongoing challenges, Ripple Effect appears committed to delivering a strong multiplayer foundation. With crossplay central to the game’s ecosystem, the success of its anti-cheat measures will be critical to long-term player confidence. Whether console players ultimately keep crossplay enabled may depend on how well these systems perform when the game officially launches in October.

Source: IGN