Steam's new beta update adds helpful feature for Secure Boot and TPM 2.0

Steam's latest beta test adds Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 detection, allowing gamers to easily check and see if PCs support the new security mandates.

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The Steam client will soon get a new feature that helps gamers prep their PCs for modern games. New titles like Battlefield 6 and Black Ops 7 both require hardware-based security features to be enabled, including TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot. Gamers may have to go through BIOS settings to tick on the settings, and in some cases, may have to buy new systems altogether.

This can be a headache for the common gamer. To help ease the frustration of the process, Valve is baking in native detection tools into Steam that will check and see if these protocols are turned on and show the results in a handy, easy-to-read info pane.

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Steam Client Beta - September 23rd

The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes:

Windows - Added detecting if Secure Boot and a TPM are enabled on the current machine. This information is displayed under Help > System Information. It is now also collected when opting into the Steam Hardware Survey.

Security for online-oriented multiplayer games has tightened over the years, starting with Activision requiring real-world phone numbers in order to register Call of Duty accounts, and then moving towards system-level protections. That's on top of the anti-cheat systems like Ricochet that were specifically created to protect these billion-dollar video games.

It's expected that future big-budget productions from AAA firms will have similar hardware-based protections put into place, so don't expect TPM 2.0 or Secure Boot requirements to go anywhere.