No, Battlefield 6 Is Not Forcing Players to Uninstall Valorant in Order to Play
Word on the street is that EA and DICE aren’t liking the fact that you’re playing another game outside of their own. While there might be some truth to that, what isn’t entirely true is the recent discovery made by players during the Battlefield 6 beta, where the game was prompting users to uninstall Valorant in order to play the beta.
It seems that people have been intentionally misled, as DICE and EA aren’t forcing you to uninstall another game. But why is it asking some users then? Well, there’s a good explanation, one that isn’t likely to be a growing issue in the future.
Before the misinformation spreads even further, read on for the technical explanation as to why this is happening.
Valorant and Battlefield 6 Don’t Play Well Together If You Try to Play Them at the Same Time
A few days ago, the Battlefield 6 subreddit saw a post from a user who claimed that Battlefield 6 was asking them to uninstall Valorant. While the wording of the message is factual, many have run with this as EA and DICE taking a shot at Riot Games, when the reality is, it’s Battlefield 6’s anti-cheat working as intended.
So what’s the deal with that message then? The answer is that this specific user was attempting to run both games simultaneously, but Battlefield 6 was unable to launch because Valorant was already utilizing the processes required by its anti-cheat system.
Sort of think about those times whenever someone brings up whether or not they should be running more than one antivirus on their PC. It’s fairly common knowledge that having more than one active process can lead to more issues, as the two will compete with each other to perform their intended tasks. Performance issues, crashes, and other oddities are things you’ll likely notice, and overall, it just doesn’t make sense to run two at once. On top of that, you’re taking resources away from your hardware, so unless you hate your CPU, it’s never wise to run more than one antivirus.
So why would anyone think it would be a good idea to run two games at once that each has kernel-level security? Specifically, security that requires access to the deepest levels of your operating system. The answer is, you wouldn’t. Battlefield 6’s anti-cheat software, like Valorant’s Vanguard, operates at the kernel level. When two kernel-level programs with similar functions are active simultaneously, they can conflict with each other, leading to system instability, crashes, and other errors.
But don’t take my word for it, take the word of Riot Games’ antichate, Phillip Koskinas:
Vanguard is compatible with Javelin, and you don’t need to uninstall one anti-cheat to use the other.
— Phillip Koskinas (@deteccphilippe) August 11, 2025
However, BF6 does not currently allow the VALORANT client to be running simultaneously, because both drivers race to protect regions of game memory with the same technique.
And to confirm, I went ahead and installed Valorant on my PC. Battlefield 6’s open beta launched perfectly fine, up until the point that I decided to boot up Valorant. As expected, Battlefield 6 gave me this error.
It Won’t End Here
Unfortunately, with more and more games wanting secure boot and TPM 2.0 enabled, this error isn’t going to stop with Valorant and Battlefield. Eventually, you’ll see this become a widespread occurrence in multiplayer games, as more and more add the requirements. It’s a joke today, but tomorrow it’ll likely grow into a much bigger issue. Realistically, it shouldn’t be; once you stop a game, all of its processes should end with it, but that isn’t always the case with every game out there. Several titles tend to continue running in the background, even after you close them.
With anti-cheat software trying to gain deep access into gamers’ systems, you can sure as hell bet that this is going to be a problem down the road. There isn’t much we can do about this, as it seems to be the future of games. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, for example, has already been confirmed to be mandating secure boot and TPM 2.0 when it releases later this year.
It won’t be the last either, as more games will eventually start pushing for this as they continue their endless war against cheaters.
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