Battlefield’s Javelin Anti-Cheat Has Some Overlap With Valorant’s Vanguard

Battlefield 6 may have more impressive anti-cheat systems than we initially thought.

Riot Games Mints Javelin’s Reputation

Riot Games’ Cheat Executive Officer Phillip Koskinas made this announcement on Twitter:

Vanguard is compatible with Javelin, and you don’t need to uninstall one anti-cheat to use the other. 

However, BF6 does not currently allow the VALORANT client to be running simultaneously, because both drivers race to protect regions of game memory with the same technique.

This announcement led content creator Tactical Brit to share his opinion on their anti-cheat systems:

It appears #Battlefield6 anticheat, combined with secure boot is very aggressive and deploying tool sets similar to the Industry Diamond Valorant’s Vanguard.

Factor in a paid price tag and Cheaters will struggle to get off the ground.

We may see some in the Free to Play segment of the game, but this is a resounding W. Looks like Javelin isn’t here to mess about.

They’ve even gone as far as to Ban DS4Windows and it looks like reWASD and other cheese softwares will also be hit day one.

What’s So Great About Vanguard?

Koskinas talked about Vanguard last year. Valorant’s anti-cheat has been so effective that cheat makers are having a hard time catching up.

Vanguard popularized kernel level anti-cheat. This means it can make changes to your computer that even you don’t have permission to do.

This has led to some controversy. Some gamers complain about the privacy issues with this system. Vanguard has also malfunctioned before, leading to system crashes and failed ethernet connections. But overall, Vanguard has a great reputation because Valorant is known to rarely have cheaters.

What We Previously Knew About Javelin

Javelin staff revealed yesterday that they were able to block 330,000 cheaters from the Battlefield 6 open beta. That beta peaked at 521,079 concurrent players on Steam. There were beta players on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. It’s also possible some cheaters were removed from being counted on SteamDB. Still, it’s a significant fraction of the total number of players in the beta.

What Does This Tell Us About Vanguard And Javelin Now?

If Javelin takes after Vanguard, Battlefield 6 players should expect a nearly cheat-free gameplay experience. These systems don’t guarantee that cheating is 100 % eliminated. But they mitigate the issue so well that it no longer affects most players.

It could also be another advantage Battlefield 6 could have over Call of Duty. Top players and content creators have complained for years that Call of Duty has a big problem with cheating. But we have to say this is speculatory at best. There’s sufficient plausible deniability that players don’t really know.

Of course, this comparison also looks favorable for Vanguard and Riot Games’ anti-cheat. More game companies could look to emulate Vanguard for their own anti-cheat systems.

But we’ll be finding out soon if Javelin lives up to its new reputation when Battlefield 6 finally releases.