It looks like Battlefield 6's Javelin anti-cheat has been working overtime, identifying and smiting cheaters before they can muck up your games. It worked so hard, in fact, that it managed to identify hundreds of thousands of cheating instances over December.
In an anti-cheats metrics report, Battlefield Studios revealed that teams have been working diligently to improve Javelin and transparency with the player base: "A lot of the conversation lacks reliable information, and sharing one large update every season isn't enough to properly inform players. To address that, we're going to be regularly updating you with a breakdown of recent anti-cheat metrics and what they mean."
So with this in mind, Battlefield Studios shared only what happened over the course of December. One of the major metrics it uses is the Match Infection Rate (MIR): "The percentage of matches across the title that were negatively impacted by at least one cheater. This includes all suspected cheaters, even those we might not have enough evidence against."
In December, the MIR started at 2.532%. It then declined throughout the months to 2.025% before rising to 3.090% near the holiday period. For comparison, the MIR only peaked at 2.580% over the course of October to November, so there was a little more activity. 'Tis the season, I guess.
Despite the increase in nefarious activity, Javelin reportedly managed to prevent 580,389 attempts to "cheat or tamper with the game before they could impact matches," a rather successful stint.
"We also tracked 224 cheat-related programs, hardware solutions, vendors, resellers, and their associated communities," the blog post explains. "Of those, 206 of them (91.2%) publicly reported feature failures, detection notices, downtime, or fully took their cheats offline.
"We're now moving into the new year with continued focus on detection, prevention, and enforcement. You can expect our next update covering January's metrics in roughly a month's time, with more detail to help keep you informed. Keep it fair out there."
It's nice to know that, at the very least, Javelin is working as intended, as players pay the price of a Kernel-level anticheat. A software that's so aggressive it won't even play nice with Riot's anti-cheat Vanguard, and engages in a turf war that ends up with players unable to launch Battlefield 6 if Vanguard is running in the background.
