Apex Legends will switch its PC anti-cheat to EA Javelin Anticheat on September 29, 2026, EA and Respawn announced on September 24 in an official Apex Legends post that was also shared on Steam. The change retires Easy Anti-Cheat, the Epic Games tool that Apex Legends has used on PC, and moves the job to EA’s own in-house system.
What Changes on September 29
According to the announcement, PC players will be prompted to download a game update when the switch goes live. After it installs, launching the game migrates the player to EA Javelin Anticheat automatically. There is nothing to opt into and no account step described.
The part PC players will care about most is Secure Boot. Some EA games that use Javelin have asked players to go into their BIOS and turn Secure Boot on before they could play. The post says plainly that this is not the case for Apex Legends “at this time”: download, install, launch and play. The “at this time” wording leaves room for that to change later, so it is worth watching future patch notes.
EA gives two reasons for the move. Running anti-cheat in-house gives its teams “greater visibility into emerging threats” and more flexibility to build detections as cheats change. The post also thanks the Easy Anti-Cheat team at Epic Games for what it calls a long partnership, so this reads as a planned handover rather than a falling-out.
What About Console Players
Javelin is a PC system, and console players will not see a new install. The announcement says the team keeps investing in “specialized data models and server-side detection methods” aimed at console-specific cheats, and that bringing anti-cheat engineering and telemetry in-house should speed that work up. No specific console measures are named.
EA also repeats a claim from its wider Javelin reporting: on titles already using the system, it says Javelin has prevented millions of cheating attempts with an accuracy rate of over 99%. That figure is EA’s own and covers its other games, not Apex Legends.
What This Means for Players
If you play on PC, expect an update prompt on September 29 and let it finish before you queue. You should not need to touch your BIOS. Cheating in competitive shooters is an industry-wide fight, and Activision recently put a dollar figure on the Call of Duty cheat economy, which gives useful context for why publishers are pulling anti-cheat in-house. Anti-cheat software is also a common cause of launch trouble on PC, as our WARDOGS anti-cheat and launch error fixes show for another shooter. For more on the battle royale scene, see Warzone’s new crossover skin toggle, and for EA’s other big release this month, the EA FC 27 trial details.
Source: EA and Respawn, “EA Javelin Anticheat is Coming to Apex Legends,” September 24, 2026.