Fortnite is tightening its tournament anti-cheat with deeper PC security checks

Epic Games has rolled out stricter anti-cheat requirements for competitive Fortnite on PC, expanding hardware-level security checks across all tournaments from February 19. The new setup requires Secure Boot, TPM, and IOMMU to be enabled, a change Epic says is aimed at protecting game memory from cheat hardware and strengthening tournament integrity.

The update matters because it pushes Fortnite further toward the kind of deeper system-level protection already common in big competitive shooters. Epic already uses Easy Anti-Cheat with kernel-level protection while Fortnite is running, and the new PC requirements add another layer by forcing tournament players to enable motherboard and operating-system security features that make low-level tampering harder.

Epic’s explanation of the new requirement is unusually direct. The company says IOMMU helps the operating system control how hardware devices access system memory, which in turn helps protect Fortnite’s memory from cheat hardware. That makes this more than a routine anti-cheat update. Epic is responding to a class of cheats that operate below normal game-level detection and can interact with memory in ways older protections struggle to catch.

That also explains why Secure Boot and TPM are part of the package. Those features help confirm a more trusted startup environment and hardware-backed system state before the game is even running. Epic had already required TPM and Secure Boot for certain higher-level tournaments in 2025, but the February 2026 change widened that requirement to all Fortnite tournaments on PC and added IOMMU on top.

Epic says most Windows 11-compatible PCs should already support the required features or be able to enable them without new hardware, which suggests the company believes the competitive integrity gain outweighs the setup friction for players who want to compete.

Epic has not said it literally imported anti-cheat tools from Riot or Activision. What is true is that the move places Fortnite closer to the same broad security direction those games have taken. Riot says Vanguard uses a kernel-mode driver for VALORANT, while Activision says RICOCHET Anti-Cheat also uses a PC kernel-level driver to monitor software interacting with protected Call of Duty titles.

Riot has gone even further in recent updates by requiring features such as TPM 2.0, Secure Boot, IOMMU, and HVCI/VBS Memory Integrity in some Vanguard-restricted environments, arguing that these measures close off pre-boot and hardware-level cheat paths. Epic is not matching that full stack for everyday Fortnite play, but for tournament play it is clearly moving in the same direction by requiring trusted hardware and firmware settings rather than relying only on software checks once Windows has loaded.

That is why the Call of Duty and VALORANT comparison has stuck. It is less about shared branding and more about philosophy. The biggest competitive shooters are increasingly treating anti-cheat as a problem that starts at the system level, not just inside the game client.

The important limit here is that Epic’s new hardware requirements are for tournament play, not the entire Fortnite player base. Casual players are not being forced into the same setup across all modes, which lets Epic harden its competitive environment without putting the same barrier in front of every PC user.

Even so, the signal is clear. Epic says it is fighting cheating through multiple fronts, including kernel-level protection, suspicious-behavior detection using data and machine learning, exploit fixes, legal action against cheat sellers and rulebreakers, and now tighter system requirements for tournament players. The company is treating competitive integrity as something that has to be enforced above, below, and outside the game itself.

The real test will be whether these measures reduce the kind of advanced cheating Epic is targeting without creating too much friction for legitimate competitors. But the direction is unmistakable. Fortnite is not just updating anti-cheat tools. It is raising the technical standard for anyone who wants to compete seriously on PC.