Battlefield 6 Open Beta forces PC gamers to mess with their BIOS to enable secure boot-and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is next

If you try to play Battlefield 6 Open Beta on your PC, you may encounter a problem: “Security boot not enabled”.

you are not alone. PC gamers who want to play the latest open beta of dice are live and can only enable secure boot on their PC. A rough look at social media, Subreddits and IGN's own comments suggests that some people are in trouble.

Be clear, EA has published a user guide on how to enable secure boot on your PCand promote the guide on social media. Here is the guide I personally have to use to start the Battlefield 6 Open Beta. But this certainly requires a certain level of confidence, as it involves patching a part of the computer, and not all PC gamers will be immediately familiar with: BIOS.

There are some things like TPM 2.0 (must be turned on) that can be handled, and you need to make sure that the Windows disk is GPT instead of MBR (not everyone knows what these are). All of this may not be able to enable it until you can even enable Secure Boot, which means you need to refer to the manufacturer for guidance (Gulp!).

Yes, this will not be a problem for experienced PC gamers, but for many others, it will be a daunting process. And if you think this is isolated from Battlefield 6, you're wrong. Just yesterday, Activision announced that the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will require the exact same thing: enable secure boot.

So, what help is this? Enhance gaming security with built-in Windows PC features. It’s no secret that cheating in competitive multiplayer is a huge problem for publishers. Activision spent millions of people trying to reverse the narrative appeal. EA will notice that Battlefield 6 is overspent during launch. TPM 2.0 seems to be a new reality for PC gamers.

This is the explanation of Activision Blog Posts Posted yesterday:

TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) is a hardware-based industry standard built on a CPU or motherboard, hardware-based security features, and the boot process of verifying that the PC has not been tampered with. Secure boot ensures that only the PC can load trusted software when Windows boots.

When Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is released later this year, TPM 2.0 and secure boot will be required to play on your PC. Activision warns: “These hardware-level protections are a key part of our counter-statement efforts and we are asking all players to obtain immediate compliance.”

Back in Battlefield 6, the open Beta safe boot process will surely cause panic among some people, while others find themselves having other problems that they haven't had before. Early signs that Battlefield 6 Open Beta has great interestso it's interesting how this develops over the course of the weekend.

Wesley is IGN's news director. Find him on Twitter via @wyp100. You can reach Wesley via [email protected] or secretly visit [email protected].