EA AntiCheat will launch with FIFA 23.
FIFA 23

Electronic Arts just announced their own anti-cheat solution. Starting with the PC release of FIFA 23, EA will include their kernel-level anti-cheat called EA AntiCheat (EAAC). This is an anti-cheat that EA has developed in house through the company's Game Security & Anti-Cheat team.

EA did provide a brief FAQ as part of today's announcement. In short, EA says that EAAC will not be implemented into all of their games. They are working with their studios to determine which games will be right for the use of this anti-cheat. EA also notes that they have conducted extensive tests to make sure EAAC does not degrade gameplay in any perceptible way. EAAC also only runs when a game using it is run.

For privacy, EA says that they have worked with "independent, 3rd party computer security and privacy services firms to ensure EAAC operates with data privacy top of mind." EAAC is said to "not gather any information about your browsing history, applications that are not connected to EA games, or anything that is not directly related to anti-cheat protection."

FIFA 23 will be out on PC on October 1, 2022.

Why is kernel level anti-cheat needed?

This varies on a game-by-game basis. For games that are highly competitive and contain many online modes like FIFA 23, kernel-mode protection is absolutely vital. When cheat programs operate in kernel space, they can make their cheat functionally invisible to anti-cheat solutions that live in user-mode. Unfortunately, the last few years have seen a large increase in cheats and cheat techniques operating in kernel-mode, so the only reliable way to detect and block these is to have our anti-cheat operate there as well.

With FIFA 23, we’ll see new and exciting cross-play features. In addition to EAAC protecting our PC players from cheaters, our console players who match with PC opponents will also be protected from cheaters operating on PC platforms.​