Respawn and EA announced on September 24, 2026 that Apex Legends will replace Easy Anti-Cheat with EA Javelin Anticheat on PC, effective September 29, 2026. EA and Respawn said in the announcement on the official Apex Legends news site that the change lands mid-season, during Split 2 of the Marked season, which began September 15. PC players will be migrated automatically after a game update; console players are not moving to Javelin and stay on server-side detection methods.
What is changing on September 29
Easy Anti-Cheat, owned by Epic Games, has protected Apex Legends on PC since launch. EA thanked the Easy Anti-Cheat team for “a long and fruitful partnership” and is bringing protection in-house under EA Javelin Anticheat, the same system already running across other EA titles.
There is no manual install. On September 29, PC players will be prompted to download a game update, and the switch happens on the next launch.
After the update completes, launch Apex Legends and you’ll automatically be migrated to EA Javelin Anticheat – simple as that!
The most practical detail for PC players is what is not required. Javelin has required Secure Boot to be enabled in BIOS on some other EA games, and EA acknowledges players may remember that step — but states that “at this time, that is not the case for Apex Legends.” EA has not said whether that requirement could be added later.
The move was first flagged in the Marked Midseason patch notes on September 14, which opened with an “Anti Cheat Update” section. The September 24 blog is the full announcement.
EA’s case for bringing anti-cheat in-house
EA’s stated reasoning is control and speed of response. The announcement says: “Moving to EA Javelin Anticheat will give our anticheat teams greater visibility into emerging threats and more flexibility to develop and improve detections as cheating evolves.” EA also reiterated that Javelin only runs while a protected game is running, and that anti-cheat engineering, telemetry and data capabilities are being consolidated in-house for faster response.
EA says Javelin has prevented millions of cheating attempts on titles already running it while maintaining an accuracy rate above 99 percent. Its Javelin year-in-review blog, published roughly two weeks before the Apex announcement, puts the figures at 57.1 million players safeguarded and 26.7 million cheat attempts prevented over the past year, with a stated false positive rate under one percent. That report also describes a deliberate trade-off:
We could ban more, faster, but we’d risk false positives impacting our legitimate players.
The same report notes Javelin expanded over the last year to cover skate., Battlefield Labs, Battlefield 6 and EA SPORTS College Football 27. EA says it maintains an appeals process for players who believe they were banned in error, but does not disclose review specifics to avoid exploitation.
Console detection is handled separately
Javelin is not coming to consoles. EA says it continues to invest in “specialized data models and server-side detection methods” aimed at console-specific cheats, and frames game integrity as a multi-platform priority. EA also says it added new detections in September targeting unauthorised controller hardware and software — cheating devices and programs — across PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch 2.
For players
There is no prep work. Expect a mandatory patch on September 29 and budget a few minutes of download time before your first session that day. Nothing needs to change in BIOS, and Secure Boot is not a requirement at launch, so machines that could not run Javelin-protected EA titles for that reason should still be able to launch Apex.
- PC: take the update, launch the game, and the anti-cheat client swaps over on its own.
- Console: nothing changes on your end; detection stays server-side, with new checks aimed at unauthorised controller hardware and software.
- Ranked and competitive: EA has not confirmed a ban wave tied to the migration, so treat any claims of one as unverified until EA says otherwise.
If you are banned and believe it is an error, the appeals process remains the only route, and EA will not publish how those reviews are conducted.