Ranked Apex Legends Players Are "Kidnapping" Teammates To Farm Kills

Some Apex Legends players are resorting to devious methods to help farm kills in Ranked by luring teammates to enemy squads, effectively trapping them in death loops.

First noticed by Eurogamer, various players took to the game's subreddit to decry the issue. Called "ranked kidnapping," it's a form of stat boosting that sees teams lure one of their squamates to other enemy players, who are usually located near a respawn beacon. What results is an endless death loop: One player is killed by an enemy team, only to then be revived and redeployed by their allies for the process to repeat ad nauseam.

Reddit user MohSSEEZZ posted a clip of their "ranked kidnapping" in action, in which they got teamed up on by their two random allies in Diamond ranked. The culprits, aligned with the enemy squad, led MohSSEEZZ to an encampment on the map only for them to be shot dead by the opposing players. This apparently happened two more times before MohSSEEZZ chose to leave the ranked game, suffering an abandonment penalty.

Other Redditors chimed in on MohSSEEZZ's post, saying a similar situation happened to them in Ranked. One player said they started "running into people doing this repeatedly" across multiple games when they hit Diamond Rank 2. Another suggested they played with the same culprits who got MohSSEEZZ the first time.

This form of cheating is the most recent ailment plaguing the Apex Legends community. Developer Respawn Entertainment has been cooking up a "console reckoning" for players participating in DDoS attacks and other cheaters.

In other Apex Legends news, Season 9: Legacy goes live on May 4 for all platforms. It adds the new legend Valkyrie, brings the Peacekeeper shotgun back to ground loot, and introduces a permanent team deathmatch mode called Arenas.