355,000 Apex Legends Cheaters Banned On PC, And That's Just The Beginning

Respawn Entertainment is not taking the matter of Apex Legends cheaters lightly. For a game that is played exclusively online and brings together 60 players for each match, the potential for cheating ruining the experience is a real problem. Respawn has its banhammer out and ready to go however, as the developer confirmed in a Reddit post that as of March 8, it had banned more than 355,000 players on PC alone. The company has also addressed some other pressing matters, such as players disconnecting and the possibility of being able to reconnect to a match you've dropped from (don't get your hopes up).

In terms of dealing with cheaters, Respawn uses the Easy-Anti-Cheat tools for the PC version of the battle royale game. It's working to some extent, but Respawn acknowledged that fighting against cheaters is an "ongoing war."

"We'll need to continue to adapt to and be very vigilant about fighting [cheaters]," Respawn said. "We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players."

Respawn added that it is working on new anti-cheat measures, but the developer doesn't plan to openly communicate its plans--and that's intentional.

"We're going to have to be pretty secretive about our plans," Respawn said. "Cheaters are crafty and we don't want them to see us coming."

At a high level, Respawn said it has already begun communicating with anti-cheat experts within EA and outside of it. Not only that, but Respawn has begun to scale up its own internal anti-cheat team, while the studio also plans to introduce new reporting functionality for bad behaviour. With more than 50 million players already and its popularity only continuing to rise, it's no surprise that Apex Legends cheats have become increasingly commonplace.

Another significant complaint among players that isn't tied directly to cheaters is the matter of quitters. Specifically, one situation that isn't uncommon is that players will attempt to communicate which of the game's characters they want to play as, and if someone picks that legend first, they'll disconnect. With the game not replacing that member of the team, it puts you at a serious disadvantage before your feet even touch the ground.

In the Reddit post, Respawn said it's aware of this but, again, that it's hesitant to share specific plans so that players can't counteract them. "We are very aware of the cases of players spamming during character select and the drop and then disconnecting shortly after. 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."

Additionally, Respawn said it's working on improving general stability and performance on PC, and to that end, it's releasing aapatch soon that will address some of the known crashes. AMD is visiting Respawn's offices soon to discuss best practices; Nvidia already came by to the studio.

Respawn also said it's aware that people are asking for Apex Legends to allow players to re-connect to a match if they drop out. However, there are no plans for this because it "opens up a lot of risk" for abuse, while Respawn said the efforts that would be required to release such a feature would take away from other, more pressing matters. Finally, Respawn said in the post that it's aware of issues related to slow performance at the start of matches. The studio is looking into the matter, but it might not be a simple, quick 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. "We're just rolling up our sleeves and digging in. We'll keep you updated on any progress we make."

It appears this latest update from Respawn is related only to PC; given the closed nature of consoles, cheating by way of third-party software is generally less common on console than PC, though cheating does still happen on PS4 and Xbox One.

In other Apex Legends news, the latest weapon balance patch is out out, dealing primarily with Peacekeeper and Wingman. Additionally, a future update will address hitbox concerns and make additional balance changes to certain characters. The game's first battle pass is due out sometime this month and may include a new character, although Respawn hasn't gone into great deal about what it'll consist of, exactly when it's releasing, or what it'll cost.