As the first weekend of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 beta approaches, Activision's Ricochet anti-cheat team has published a comprehensive guide to assist PC players in enabling essential security features required for online play. These features, namely TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, have become increasingly stringent for the upcoming title.
While these security measures have been present in Call of Duty titles for several years, their enforcement appears to be stricter for Modern Warfare 4 compared to Black Ops 7 and the current version of Warzone. Previously, players not meeting these requirements faced restrictions from specific game modes like Ranked Play and were potentially placed in separate matchmaking pools. However, for the Modern Warfare 4 beta, the restrictions are more absolute: players failing to meet the requirements "will be restricted from playing any online game mode."
To address player concerns and facilitate access, Activision has provided both a detailed written guide and a video tutorial. The video offers step-by-step walkthroughs, including UEFI/BIOS configurations for both AMD and Intel systems. The guide specifically highlights how different platforms refer to TPM, offering clarity on the setup process. Furthermore, an application called the Call of Duty Secure Attestation Wizard is available for PC users to verify if their system meets the necessary security standards. This utility was updated earlier this month in anticipation of Modern Warfare 4's launch.
Secure Boot is a fundamental system feature that grants anti-cheat software deeper access to a Windows installation by loading during the PC's startup sequence, thereby preventing cheats from initiating at boot. TPM 2.0 enhances this by introducing a hardware-based layer of protection, capable of detecting tampering with the PC's boot process. These low-level security features are becoming a common requirement in competitive PC gaming, with titles like Battlefield 6 and Valorant already enforcing similar measures. Battlefield 6, for instance, already enforces Secure Boot and is looking to implement TPM 2.0 support soon.