EA released its 'Javelin' anti-cheat last year to power the multiplayer gameplay in Battlefield 6. Like every other anti-cheat software out there, it runs at the kernel level to spoof out any bad actors or code, and EA has said it's been very successful thus far. So much so that the company is now seemingly looking to port it over to Arm and eventually Linux, according to a new job listing.
Titled "Senior Anti-Cheat Engineer, ARM64," the listing is pretty self-explanatory. The main responsibility endowed upon this engineer would be to "develop a native ARM driver" for the Javelin anti-cheat. Save an official announcement, this confirms that EA wants games like Battlefield to run Arm-based devices soon. Apple Silicon is not EA's interest, and Qualcomm's X-series hasn't been enough of a hit to justify this either.
That leaves us with Nvidia's upcoming N1/N1X chips that are highly rumored to launch this year. The timing for this role aligns with the chips' reported debut. The N1 silicon is said to finally bring Windows-on-Arm to the mainstream, with a focus on gaming that Arm has generally never been known for. After all, there's a 20-core Arm CPU and an RTX 5070-level GPU in there, according to the rumor mill, so it's plenty powerful.
The job description specifically mentions, "development of [our] Windows on ARM support," so there's no ambiguity over what platform we're talking about. Previously, Epic added support for Easy Anti-Cheat on Arm and Linux devices, but its flagship title, Fortnite, still doesn't run on those machines. Microsoft also released the Xbox app on Arm-based Windows 11 devices just a month ago.
Most anti-cheat software is only designed to run on x86-based Windows machines — part of Valve's push for Linux gaming has been held back by this. Similarly, Arm-based devices can't run anti-cheat either, which shuts out a large chunk of the most popular games from the platform. Therefore, getting a native Arm version of Javelin to work on N1-powered machines would be a huge step forward for non-x86 PC gaming.
In fact, the job listing also includes a point that reads: "Chart a path for EA Javelin Anticheat to support additional OS and hardware in the future, such as Linux and Proton." Namedropping Proton is a big deal; it shows clear intent to eventually have support for Javelin on things like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine — another audience EA doesn't want to miss out on, which can influence others like Riot and Epic to follow suit.
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