Battlefield 6 open beta hopefuls are reporting 48,000-player queues before the beta's even started, but Secure Boot errors and shader compilations mean PC players probably should be getting an early start

Battlefield 6 beta access hasn't even begun yet, but that hasn't stopped eager players from absolutely flooding the servers trying to get an early taste. Pre-loaded Battlefield 6 players have already made an impact on the Steam charts, and it seems they're still trucking in by the bucketful, with some folks landing in queues upwards of 50,000 players long.

There have been numerous reports of long queues in the beta as of this morning, but the biggest I've seen comes from this Reddit post reporting a position of 48,100th in line. It's probably too early for doom and gloom about the state of the beta servers – I hopped into the pre-loaded beta just a few minutes ago without any queue time, so the lines might just have been a quirk of the servers spinning up.

If you're playing on PC, you might want to try and launch the beta early for two reasons. First is the now-standard shader compilation wait, which was pretty fast on my machine, but will still slow you down for a bit when the Battlefield 6 beta times and dates arrive. Better to get it out of the way now.

A bigger time sink might be the Battlefield 6 Secure Boot error that many players are facing – an issue I also ran into as I tried to launch the beta. Battlefield 6 requires Secure Boot as part of its anti-cheat features, so you'll need to head into your BIOS to enable it. EA has a big guide on how to enable Secure Boot on its official support site, and I'll give you one extra tip now: you need the UEFI mode rather than the Legacy/CSM boot enabled.

EA says Secure Boot "supports the need for enhanced security while playing and utilizing new anti-cheat features in Battlefield. As cheat developers continue to evolve their tactics, we're stepping up our game too. Requiring Secure Boot provides us with features that we can leverage against cheats that attempt to infiltrate during the Windows boot process."

Intrusive anti-cheat measures have been a matter of some controversy for PC players in recent years, so it'll be up to individual players to decide if better protection from cheaters is worth giving a game deeper access to their computer. Just make your decision quick, because this beta is kicking off on August 7 in early access and August 9 for everyone.

Check out our guide to the Battlefield 6 beta rewards and Twitch Drops you can expect.