After dropping out of nowhere and breaking records last month, Apex Legends is still one of the most popular games in the world. It is consistently in the top 3 of most viewed games on twitch and the player base doesn’t look like it is going to fade away any time soon. This popularity of Apex Legends comes with a caveat though, as greater number of players means a higher number of cheaters too. Players have been complaining about the swarm of cheaters in Apex games for weeks now and it looks like Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has finally listened to their complaints.
The developer confirmed in a Reddit post published on the 8th of March that it had banned more than 350,000 players on PC and many more on other platforms. “We’ll need to continue to adapt to and be very vigilant about fighting them”, Respawn said about the cheaters. “We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all the players.” Hallelujah then, it seems like some developers actually do care about their player base and Respawn has gained a lot of praise for how they deal with issues.
Apart from using the usual Easy-Anti-Cheat tools for PC version, Respawn is also working on newer and more innovative anti-cheat measures but they don’t plan to openly communicate their plans about it. “We’re going to have to be pretty secretive about our plans. Cheaters are crafty and we don’t want them to see us coming.” This signifies their efforts to keep Apex Legends fair and bring down the hammer on cheaters.
Another widespread issue with the game is players spamming character select before the game and then disconnecting, leaving the 2-man squad behind that significantly diminishing their odds of a win. As the skill levels of players rise with time, having fewer players in the squad at the start of a game makes an even bigger impact on the game.
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Consequently, Respawn is also working on having some sort of fix for this issue. “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”, Respawn said about the prevailing issue. “Solutions won’t happen right away but we’re on it.”
Respawn has also started to work with top anti-cheat experts. It doesn’t just end there though as Respawn Entertainment, in unison with EA, has also begun to boost the numbers of its internal anti-cheat team. They also plan to introduce some sort of in-game mechanic to report players for bad behaviour.
Additionally, Respawn also said that it is actively working to improve the frame rate and stability issues and patches addressing some of the known crashes will be released soon for both AMD and Nvidia users.
However, there are no plans to introduce reconnecting to a match if your connection drops for some reason as it would “open up a lot of risk” for abuse of this mechanic.
Finally, Respawn is also looking into players lagging out at the start of matches but warns that it might not be a simple fix. “If this could be fixed by spending money on faster/more servers we would do it, but unfortunately there is no silver bullet on this one”, Respawn said in the Reddit post. “We’re just rolling up our sleeves and digging in. We’ll keep you updated on any progress we make. Respawn also recently announced a new weapon balancing update to keep the game fair and engaging.
This is exciting news as it hints at Respawn listening to feedback and working hard to keep their player base happy and their dedication to support the game for a very long time.
