Apex Legends has had a significant cheating problem for a while now. Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale is one of the best out there with a perfect blend of quirky characters and skills to make characters feel unique, but the top players are still the ones with the best aim. It’s that blend of skill and unique powers that makes Apex Legends so fun to play. Unfortunately, it’s also a game with a serious hacking problem where cheaters run rampant.
Every game has an issue with cheaters, especially first-person shooters, but rarely has a game had the significant issues that Apex seems to have. Aim botters, exploits, and even hackers from a different game have all at one point or another caused problems in the Apex community. It’s become such an issue in ranked that the hashtag #SaveApexRanked has become a popular slogan on Twitter in a plea from fans to fix the hacks.
With Season 10 on the way for Apex, Respawn Entertainment is at a critical moment where they need to get hacking under control. Otherwise, they might lose a significant portion of the player base for good. While they’re always trying to work on fixes, Respawn did report in late July a significant ban of cheaters across multiple platforms.
Banned 2,086 players early this morning for abuse of an RP loss forgiveness exploit (dashboarding) and abuse of a matchmaking exploit allowing high-rank players into Bronze lobby to farm. Breakdown is as follows:
PC-44
PS4- 1,965
Switch- 15
Xbox- 62
— Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) July 30, 2021
In a short interview with Fanbyte, Respawn reiterated their goal is to get the cheating problem under control in Season 10. They didn’t give too many details, likely because they don’t want cheaters to prepare for what they have coming, but they’re stressing how serious an issue this is and their desire to have it resolved.
“We’ve definitely put in some things recently that we think will help the situation. We’ve seen some of that come down recently,” Apex Legends team director Steven Ferreira told us. He explained that while they cannot get into the details of what’s being implemented or future plans, Ferreira assured me that “we have a team dedicated to working on that.” Ferreira then stated that while ensuring a smooth season launch is important, “that kind of a problem is important all the time.”
Unfortunately, even if the Apex team is able to get the current wave of cheating under control, there is always going to be a new kind of hack or cheat that they have to be on the lookout for. Developers are facing a moving target when it comes to creating code that can detect cheating. Aimbots are growing more sophisticated, more difficult to detect, and they’re rampant in multiplayer shooters. Call of Duty: Warzone just had an issue last month where it had to prevent the development of a cheat that was advertised as undetectable and had some players intentionally exploiting a glitch that would make them invisible. Research done by Surfshark indicated that more players are searching for ways to hack Fortnite than any other popular shooter.
If it’s not clear by now when a game gets popular there will be attempts to cheat in it. The Apex Legends issue is unfortunately not unique, and it’s one that will continue as long as the game is running.