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Need help setting up TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot? Call of Duty has you covered

by admin October 1, 2025

As mentioned above, you’ll need TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot set on your PC to play the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 beta. Since that can get kind of technical, the team has put together a video to help you get that rectified. Check it out below, along with our hands-on preview from COD: NEXT!

We went hands-on with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at Call of Duty NEXT — A returning player’s perspective

It’s a wild ride filled with bullets

The Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Multiplayer beta kicks off this week, starting with Early Access tomorrow for players who have pre-ordered the game, and then October 5 for all players.

For players on PC, in order to get their PC compliant today with TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot, the team has put together a quick tutorial that shows how to enable critical security settings so they can jump into the beta and full game at launch with ease.

Check out the video here.

This is part of Call of Duty’s detailed support guides to enable these two critical features, bringing players on the journey toward the most robust protections in gaming. The support hub also includes helpful guides for the top ten motherboard manufacturers used by the Call of Duty community. The entire, detailed step-by-step guide, motherboard guides, and new tutorial video are available at https://support.activision.com/tpm

Stay tuned to GamingTrend for more Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 news and info!

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October 1, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Steam’s latest beta lets you easily check if you have Secure Boot enabled before firing up Battlefield 6 or Call of Duty

by admin September 24, 2025

Steam’s latest client beta has given you another way to quickly check whether you’ve got secure boot enabled before you hop into some FPSsing about. Enabling the setting’s become mandatory for the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6, as the possibly futile war on cheating continues to rage like, er, well, you know.

It’s a controversial way of going about trying to limit the amout of fraudulent 360 no-scopes, as it involves publishers mandating an aspect of how players’ hardware’s used, if a pretty easy one to check with a trip to your BIOS if you know what you’re doing. Not everyone’s used to delving into those settings though, which is why it’s nice Valve have made this useful addition to their game playing place.

As outlined in this brief post spotted by Pretty Cold Grandma, a Steam client beta update deployed early this morning has brought in this tweak.

To use it to check if you’ve got secure boot enabled, you’ll first need to opt into the latest client beta if you haven’t already. On desktop, that’s done by heading to the Steam logo in the top left when you open up Steam, then selecting ‘Settings’ from the drop-down menu. From there, you go to ‘Interface’, ‘Steam Client Beta Participation’, and select ‘Steam Beta Update’ from the drop-down menu to the right of the latter. A restart of Steam’ll be required, then once it loads back up, you can head to ‘Help’ in the top left, select ‘System Information’ from the drop-down.

You’ll get a list of info about your PC, and in the bit about your operating system, you’ll find a line which specifies whether or not secure boot is enabled. Just below that’s a line listing your Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version, this being a processor that allows your PC to carry out cryptographic operations with some added security measures. It’s generally a requirement to get secure boot up and running.

Image credit: Valve / Rock Paper Shotgun

We’ll see if these measures ever manage to do more than continue to move the goalposts those keen to cheat will likely just find another way to auto-aim their bullets through. At least if the amount of time/energy it takes to check if secure boot’s enabled can be minimised, with the added bonus of making it easier for the less tech-savvy, that’s something positive.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

PC modders optimise Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater before Konami does, and add Hideo Kojima to boot

by admin August 29, 2025

PC modders have already begun optimising Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, even before Konami has released further updates.

The Metal Gear remake has been criticised for its poor performance, with videos shared on social media of jarring stuttering. In particular, the PS5 Pro version has come under fire.

Konami acknowledged a handful of specific issues ahead of launch, though general optimisation wasn’t included. In just a couple of days, though, PC modders have taken matters into their own hands.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Review – A MUD-SLICK CLASSIC REBORNWatch on YouTube

Modder FrancisLouis, for instance, has created the Metal Gear Optimiser mod on NexusMods, which “reduces stuttering by optimising shader compilation and assets streaming”. FrancisLouis notes results can vary depending on hardware.

Other mods – such as Better Uncap FPS v1.2 from Mstrthief, Unlocked FPS from Hybred, and Unlock FG and FPS from Velasquez among others – seek to provide an unlocked framerate and other benefits

It’s clear optimisation is a priority among modders, who have seemingly been able to make improvements quicker than an official patch from Konami – though of course, mods aren’t always reliable.

Perhaps the funniest mod for the game, though, is from Fiend, which allows players to swap Snake for Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima.

Kojima has stated in interviews he won’t be playing the remake himself, likely due to his acrimonious split from Konami. But that hasn’t stopped players putting him in the game instead.

Earlier this week, Epic boss Tim Sweeney blamed developers for any optimisation issues when using Unreal Engine 5 – Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater being one such game to use the engine.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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August 29, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

It really sucks” Battlefield 6 technical director bummed out about those unable to play due to Secure Boot requirement, believes anti-cheat cat-and-mouse game will “never end

by admin August 28, 2025

The Battlefield 6 open betas proved exceptionally popular earlier this month for many, but a significant portion of the PC playerbase were met with a daunting wall to play thanks to the game’s Secure Boot requirement. This technical hurdle is in place for the game’s anti-cheat, a kernel-level bit of software dedicated to curbing a rising cheating problem across online FPS games.

Alas, the Battlefield 6 beta still had a few cheaters running around and ruining things for their fellow players. To find out more about whether Battlefield 6’s Javalin anti-cheat was successful in the eyes of EA, Eurogamer sat down to talk to Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl. Buhl would express pride at the anti-cheat team’s work, sadness for those unable to play due to the Secure Boot requirement, and resigned to him and his peer’s fate in the endless battle against cheaters.

Cheeck out some Battlefield 6 multiplayer gameplay here!Watch on YouTube

“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed,” Buhl beamed when asked how he felt the anti-cheat held up during the betas. “Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”

Buhl would elaborate by sharing that Battlefield 6 had two anti-cheat teams working on the game, in what he described as a “pretty massive investment” by EA. There’s the EA anti-cheat team that built the Javalin anti-cheat team, as well as the Battlefield 6 anti-cheat team that focused on “integrating EA’s technology as well as monitoring and all the other responsibilities you’d expect from an anti-cheat team”.

The reason for this expense is to ensure a “fair play experience”, which was “critical to Battlefield’s success” according to Buhl. The cost for the user is granting additional access to Battlefield Studios’ and EA’s anti-cheat, as well as enabling Secure Boot on their PC. This led to many turning away from the PC beta, something Buhl is bummed out about.

Those able to get the game running are having a blast.

“The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot” Buhl admits. “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play: that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”

Buhl continues: “Unfortunately these are some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating. Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”

So where does this cat-and-mouse game end? Does it ever end, and will players have to get used to providing kernel-level access, enabling Secure Boot, and opening their door to other technical requirements for new games?

“The short answer is it never ends,” states Buhl. “We expect our anti-cheat team will continue working on technology, and if at some point there’s a new technological requirement that we’ll have to add that’s critical to securing the fairness of the game, we’ll do that. Or we’ll certainly evaluate that. Anti-cheat never ends, it’s a constant cat-and-mouse game. We’re never going to win. Hopefully they’re never going to win. But in the end, we want to be as safe and secure as possible.

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August 28, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Battlefield 6 Secure Boot requirement killed my PC, EA should be responsible

by admin August 18, 2025

My motherboard died in the fight against Battlefield 6 cheating. Just turn on Secure Boot, they said. Just follow directions, they said. It’s easy, they said. You just, y’know, push a button. Click on something and it works, no problems. Watch YouTube videos. It’s easy!

I am one of the hundreds (if not thousands) of people whose PC suffered as a result of EA and DICE’s quest to crush cheating in Battlefield 6. I understand why they want to do this: It negatively impacts the experience of hundreds (or possibly thousands) of PC players, and Battlefield 6 is looking to be a return to form for the franchise, and EA doesn’t want anything getting in the way of that narrative. Therefore, EA requires PC players to run their PCs with Secure Boot enabled when playing Battlefield 6 – even in the beta. But forcing all players to enable Secure Boot shifts the responsibility onto the players. This is EA’s problem to solve, not the players. And since this is their problem for the game they decided to develop so that we can buy and enjoy, they should be responsible for what happens to the machines of those who play their games.

According to Microsoft, Secure Boot is a security feature that is “designed to prevent malicious software from loading when your PC starts up (boots).” In very simplistic terms, cheating software is not, by default, malicious software. It’s the EA Javelin anti-cheat’s job to, basically, tell the PC that cheating software is malicious, and to disable it while the game is active. On paper, activating it should not have been complicated. For many players, it was not. Open the BIOS, enable Secure Boot. Done. But for others, it was much more complicated and had devastating effects.

I bought a pre-built PC just before Secure Boot was enabled by default. I had my PC installed with the Gigabyte Aorus X299 Gaming 3 Pro. It served my needs as a content creator and, at the time, mid-range gaming. I didn’t need the fanciest of graphics, just good framerate, lots of RAM, and the ability to connect my different cards into the PCIE slots. I have had zero problems with it until this year, when the PSU failed (easy fix), and then with Battlefield 6.

Before this pre-built PC, I built my first PC, but I didn’t mess with the BIOS much. I didn’t need to. It functioned well, everything worked, and games didn’t require me to fiddle with internal settings. I wasn’t interested in overclocking, and I sold it to a friend before any problems arose so I could get a PC more suitable for gaming and streaming. After I bought my pre-built, I didn’t need to mess with those BIOS settings, either. It wasn’t until this year that I wanted to upgrade my PC to Windows 11 that I had to make a change in my BIOS.

For months, I couldn’t upgrade to Windows 11 even though I met the system requirements. Eventually, I decided to look up why. I needed to activate TPM 2.0–Trusted Platform Module. I knew how to access the BIOS, but I didn’t know where to look for the TPM setting. After watching a few YouTube videos, I successfully activated TPM 2.0 and upgraded my OS to Windows 11. Simple enough.

Fast-forward to the Battlefield 6 beta. Like many people, I wanted to mess around with the Battlefield 6 settings before the beta’s launch. Also, like many others, I received the message that I needed to enable Secure Boot to open Battlefield 6. Back to the BIOS! I looked up more YouTube videos, and what I discovered between enabling TPM and now looking into Secure Boot, there were no videos that navigated my specific motherboard’s BIOS. The previous videos I used to activate TPM forced me to make educated guesses based on other Gigabyte BIOS menus, but none were exactly the same as my menu setup. I realized this was going to be much more involved.

I checked my system information. Indeed, Secure Boot was not activated. No worries. I entered the BIOS and navigated the menus searching for Secure Boot. I didn’t see it. After some Reddit sleuthing, Gigabyte users commented on how to make the option appear by disabling the CSM. And it worked. According to a video of a Gigabyte user, it was as simple as enabling it, ignoring the message that popped up, saving, and then restarting the computer. Secure Boot enabled! I checked the system information and Secure Boot was not enabled. Weird.

I re-entered the BIOS and found the Secure Boot option again; sure enough, Secure Boot was not enabled. Odd. I enabled it again. This time, I read the message that popped up when I chose to enable it. The message mentioned a specific Platform Key that needed to be enabled. No one mentioned anything about Platform Keys on YouTube and Reddit. I conducted more research, but didn’t find much about my specific situation. I found the menu that contained the Platform Keys and activated the specific Platform Key that the pop-up message requested. I saved and restarted the computer, and, like many other people, I encountered a blank screen on boot.

After hours of troubleshooting, including removing the CMOS battery and tripping the CMOS Reset pins, I noticed the VGA indicator was on. After getting a diagnostic at a repair shop, it was discovered that both PCIE x16 slots were dead, and therefore, so was my motherboard.

I am shocked at the number of people who have had similar problems and even more shocked at the number of people who blame the PC owners. They comment as if they bought a car and understand how the whole thing works. Most people buy cars to drive around, not tinker with the insides. Imagine a car maker sending a message to everyone saying they needed to activate an engine filtering system that would further reduce carbon emissions to meet current regulations (hypothetical here), but it would risk rendering your car inoperable. People would be all over the car manufacturer for even suggesting that anyone try to do that themselves. Act like it’s a recall and have the manufacturer do it for free. If you, car manufacturer, want this feature turned on, it’s your responsibility. And yet, when EA asks a bunch of people who bought their PCs just to play their games and have no idea how to even navigate their BIOS, it’s a user error.

I found EA’s guide to enabling Secure Boot. Interestingly, it has this message:

We live in an age where if there is a problem, you can Google it, go to Reddit, and search YouTube. Heck, maybe even Twitter has answers. I wonder how many people saw this page or even this warning. Strangely, this is called a “Heads-up” with a small exclamation point. Eh, nothing too big here. Just a chance you could brick your PC if you do this wrong. No worries. No, this should be a “Warning” with big red cautionary symbols. This is not an urgent warning; it’s casual. That’s exactly how EA treated this situation.

I checked the official Battlefield Twitter account, which has 1.5 million followers. There is no mention of Secure Boot. You’ll find messages encouraging players to activate 2FA and making sure their EA accounts are linked correctly. There are also plenty of help and support messages if you’re having trouble with your linked accounts. There’s even a “Before you unlink your account…” message.

I perused the EA Help Twitter account, which has around 750,000 followers. There are messages about linking accounts to Twitch, 2FA, and troubleshooting if you’re having trouble logging in. Again, nothing about Secure Boot. Their YouTube channels offer nothing, as well. The EA Help channel doesn’t have anything related to Battlefield 6, shockingly.

EA made sure everything else was squared away, but when it came to Secure Boot, they treated it as an insignificant problem. Potentially ruining your PC and not being able to play the beta somehow does not hold the same weight as not being able to play the beta because your account is linked incorrectly.

The sheer number of variables required to make a game run on a variety of PCs is tough for developers to navigate, even for professionals. And you’re asking non-tech-savvy people to dig into their systems and give the most general instructions when you know the variability of certain processes. That’s irresponsible.

Riot Games also did this to their Valorant players. Their anti-cheat, Vanguard, forced players to enable Secure Boot. That led to similar situations like mine. All that headache just because they wanted to play a game.

I am not absolving myself from all responsibility. I’m the one who wanted to play the beta on PC, and I’m the one who entered my BIOS and nervously tried to activate Secure Boot. I am aware EA did not make me do this. What I am saying is that EA did not adequately communicate the risks associated with enabling Secure Boot, and they undermined their own warning by providing their own guide, suggesting that changing this setting is, after all, not complicated.

If EA truly wanted to do a solid by the community, their message should have been given after the Secure Boot notification when launching the game, on all their social media channels and shared multiple times a day, and the message should have been “We are asking you to enable Secure Boot so that we can ensure we are able to eliminate as many cheaters as possible. If you are not confident in navigating your BIOS to enable Secure Boot, we highly encourage you to call your manufacturer’s support team. Please do not attempt this on your own.” That’s a message that is supportive, mindful, and does not provide their own general solution that undermines the warning. I would absolutely absolve EA of any responsibility with a message like that, with frequent communication.

More and more people are enjoying PC games than in the past, which has led to the rise of pre-built PCs. People realize that getting the best graphics and framerate comes with PC gaming, but many do not have the expertise or confidence to build their own PC or tinker with inner software, so pre-built PCs are a great option. Since around 2018, pre-built PCs have come with Secure Boot enabled, and for many people, switching it from disabled to enabled is the only option. But for others, that is not the case. EA knows this, and all they did was post a help page, hoping that people would Google it instead of plastering help everywhere, demonstrating care about the community that plays their games.

It’s not about whether Secure Boot should be on or not; it’s the fact that we’re in an era where people are running perfectly fine PCs and are now experiencing issues because EA is set on fighting cheaters in the most extreme way. Activision will do the same with the next Call of Duty. It is assumed that enabling Secure Boot will become the norm for competitive PC games in the future, and then it will be Activision’s responsibility to let their players know in no uncertain terms that it could be risky. EA says they are not responsible. They are. Because when their game doesn’t sell, it’s their fault. They didn’t communicate. They didn’t market the game effectively. It’s all about communication, and they did not communicate this Secure Boot problem effectively.