In context: As cheaters increasingly infiltrate the deepest levels of PC systems to evade security software, the most popular multiplayer games have forced legitimate players to follow suit. Fortnite will soon add another layer of anti-cheat surveillance to monitor users' system memory at the BIOS level, likely sparking resistance from players who see the change as an unnecessary risk to system stability.
Starting February 19, all Fortnite tournaments on PC will require users to activate Secure Boot, TPM, and Input-Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU). Although virtually all PC players likely already meet the anti-cheat system's hardware requirements, many might have to update their BIOS and startup settings.
The IOMMU requirement and the expansion to all tournaments are the primary changes to Fortnite's anti-cheat policy. IOMMU is a BIOS feature designed to guard against Direct Memory Access attacks – software that enters system memory before the operating system boots. Determined cheaters are known to utilize expensive hardware, such as PCIe add-in boards, for DMA attacks that bypass the CPU and all conventional anti-cheat tools.
Players should check their motherboard manufacturer's support site for instructions on how to activate IOMMU. To identify your motherboard, press the Windows key + R to open the Run command, type msinfo32, then press Enter. The motherboard manufacturer and processor model should then appear under "BaseBoard Manufacturer."
Riot Games drew criticism late last year for requiring Valorant players to update their UEFI firmware to address an IOMMU vulnerability. Since BIOS updates can brick PCs if performed improperly, many users consider them to be an unnecessary risk for most devices.
Fortnite began requiring TPM and Secure Boot for high-level tournaments last year. The features are designed to check the Windows startup environment and prevent malware from loading upon boot. However, they are unpopular because they prevent popular titles, such as Battlefield and Call of Duty, from supporting the Steam Deck and other Linux devices. Steam beta branch users on Windows can find out whether their PCs have Secure Boot enabled by navigating to Help > System Information.
Microsoft has also recently begun testing another feature, called Remote Attestation, which checks a user's boot environment against the company's cloud servers. Although many will likely consider the requirement intrusive, it could become an alternative to kernel-level anti-cheat, which can introduce serious security risks.