In the time since its surprisingly quiet launch, Apex Legends’ popularity has exploded. The game’s success has even begun to rival that of Fortnite, its rival battle royale title, with the game briefly overtaking Fortnite on Twitch. However, that explosion of popularity has also brought a lot of problems, and one of the biggest is the issue of cheating. Developer Respawn is currently engaged in a fight against Apex Legends cheaters. In their latest check-in, they revealed to fans just how many have already been banned.
Respawn’s War Against Apex Legends Cheaters
Respawn recently published their latest ‘Check In,’ on Reddit to make fans aware of a few things regarding the game. That check in was principally focused on problems brought to the game by cheaters, spammers, and hackers. It seems that, while cheating is seemingly rampant in the game, especially on PC, Respawn aren’t taking the issue lightly. “As of today,” the studio explains; “we’ve banned over 355K players on PC through Easy-Anti-Cheat. The service works but the fight against cheaters is an ongoing war that we’ll need to continue to adapt to and be very vigilant about fighting. We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players.”
Due to the nature of this conflict, Respawn can’t reveal many details about their plans to combat Apex Legends cheaters. However, it sounds as though they’re making significant progress. What they are able to say is that they plan to expand their existing anti-cheat team. They are also reaching out to both anti-cheat experts in EA and elsewhere to learn from. Finally, Respawn plans to add a report feature so that PC gamers can report cheaters in-game. This report system will go straight to their Easy-Anti-Cheat software.
Another issue which the studio addresses is that of spammers. “We are aware of the cases of players spamming during character select and the drop and then disconnecting shortly after,” they state; “We’re keeping a lot of our strategy close to the chest so offenders don’t have time to build workarounds before we implement changes. Solutions won’t happen right away but we’re on it.”
Hopefully, Respawn gets the necessary extra resources they need to keep putting up a fight against Apex Legends cheaters. It’s doubtful that the studio, or EA, ever anticipated just how popular the game would prove to be. As such, both are on the back foot to some extent as they scramble to adapt to problems of vast scale. For now, fans will just have to hope that solutions come sooner rather than later.