DICE publishes Battlefield Community Charter, confirms Easy Anti-Cheat

Battlefield 2042 developer DICE has published a Battlefield Community Charter that announces its commitment to positive and fair play, confirming its use of Easy Anti-Cheat.

Previous reports indicated that DICE used Easy Anti-Cheat during its closed technical test. Several other games that Electronic Arts publishes—including Apex Legends and Star Wars Squadrons—use the same anti-cheat system. DICE is not only using Easy Anti-Cheat for the full game, but the system will be active during the upcoming open beta as well.

DICE is making it easier than ever to report cheaters with in-game reporting. Previously, if players wanted to report a cheater, they had to do so from the EA Help website. DICE stated that “when a cheater is sanctioned it will cause them to be instantly disconnected mid-match and permanently banned across all platforms” with IP bans. This is especially important considering Battlefield 2042 allows cross-play and cross-progression across consoles and PC.

DICE also clarified that it’s not including mouse and keyboard support for consoles at launch.

Keeping it positive

In addition to this anti-cheat announcement, DICE published a Community Charter and a commitment to Positive Play. This charter outlines the developer’s “expectations for members of our community” and includes:

• Treat Others as They Would Like to be Treated: Squad up and play the objective, together. We won’t tolerate players who negatively disrupt or engage in harmful behavior towards others.
• Keep Things Fair: Be on the right side of the fight. If you see players breaking the rules, report them.
• Share Appropriate Content: Don’t fight dirty. Make sure whatever content you’re sharing is appropriate for Battlefield players.
• Keep Things Honorable: Protect your squad. Keep it legal in Battlefield, and do not participate or encourage in dangerous or illegal activities.

Players will have tools to allow them to avoid toxic behavior in-game, according to the Charter. This includes blocking and muting players in game as well as an in-game text profanity filter. Likewise, Battlefield Portal includes admin tools that allows players to “apply persistent bans.” In other words, if you ban someone in one of your custom matches, that will ban them from all other custom matches you create.

Will it work?

A quality anti-cheat system is something that’s at the top of the wishlist for Battlefield’s PC community. Despite not launching free-to-play, Battlefield 2042‘s predecessor, Battlefield V, experienced an influx of cheaters. Now that Battlefield 2042 will enable cross-play between PC and consoles, a cheating problem could impact the entire player base, not just PC players. It appears that DICE is making more of an effort to curb cheating this time around, though easier said than done.

Though not as much of an issue as cheating, toxicity does bubble up in the Battlefield community. Generally, that’s seen more on forums and subreddits than in-game. When DICE announced Battlefield 2042‘s delay earlier this month, “fans” harassed developers and community managers online. It got so bad that producer Ben Walke posted on 2042‘s subreddit to defend community manager Adam Freeman.

Still, DICE’s community team seems more than aware of the community’s concerns. But if the anti-cheat doesn’t work, console players have the option to turn off cross-play. And if the community charter doesn’t increase positivity across the player base, our best suggestion is to stay off Reddit and Twitter.

Battlefield 2042 launches November 19th for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.