Apex Legends has launched a new ban wave in Season 8 to combat hackers and cheaters who ruin matches. Developers Respawn Entertainment have also vowed to ramp up anti-cheat efforts across the board, but especially in some regions.
Just like any other competitive online shooter, hackers always find a way to screw things up for fair players in Apex Legends.
In recent months, players on Asian servers have specifically reported an increase in the number of hackers, with some top players even urging them to avoid ranked play entirely until it is resolved.
Respawn’s head of security, Conor Ford, confirmed a new bangolf on Feb. 23, wiping more than 600 cheaters from the servers.
Respawn is now targeting hackers in Apex Legends more than ever.
Apex ban wave catches cheaters
Ford, better known as Hideouts on social media, confirmed a manual job wave of 652 cheaters on Feb. 23.
652 cheaters have been manually / individually banned today. Am tired. I love you all 🔨 ♥ ️
– Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) February 24, 2021
This follows his previous ban wave of 507 PS4 players on February 10, who had used an RP glitch to get ranked points for free. However, the ban for those users will only last until Season 9, when they can play again.
On the 507 PS4 that got banned for exploiting an RP glitch in ranked and farm-free RP, we might see some of you in Season 9. Until then, enjoy your free time at Apex and do something really productive instead of fake to play, lol ♥ ️🔨
– Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) February 10, 2021
Cheaters Ruining Apex in Japan
Contrary to popular belief, Hideouts isn’t the only person in control of banning players on Apex Legends. There are also automated systems to catch hackers.
Unfortunately, it seems that hordes of cheats have been able to bypass this protection on servers in Asia especially.
Hideouts has also responded to these issues by saying they will specifically target server cleanup in the Japanese region. Japan is the second largest market for Apex Legends.
Hey
To all my friends and Legends in Japan, I hear you and I am just as tired of the cheaters on your servers as you are. I spend a lot of my time this week focusing specifically on cleaning up your servers. Send everything my way, we’ll fight this together ♥ ️🔨– Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) February 16, 2021
In a follow-up Tweet, the developer also confirmed that “plans exist, which will be announced relatively soon, to address this issue.”
We’re waiting for these plans to be announced, but it sure sounds like Respawn has things in the pipeline to combat even more cheaters.