Popular battle royale Apex Legends received its 1.68 update yesterday, bringing a small number of weapon nerfs and a few other changes and bug fixes. Now, however, players are reporting that they are being randomly banned from Apex Legends after the update.
Apex Legends recently launched Season 9, which was one of the biggest updates the game has seen since its launch. It brought a new legend, the game's first bow weapon, and an entirely new arena mode to Apex Legends. Update 1.68 was released to rebalance the new Bocek Bow and address some of the bugs in the new arena mode and across the game from the release of Season 9.
Earlier today, however, players started reporting being disconnected and then banned from games of Apex Legends. So far, the issue has only been reported on Steam and Origin versions of the game, so as of now it doesn't look like console players have to worry. When the issue was first reported other players theorized it was for surfing or players doing exploits like the new one that allows Valkyrie players to get beneath Apex Legends' map. However, the official EA Help Twitter account replied to one banned player who tweeted about getting an unjustified ban in the game, saying that it is an issue happening to many players and that the development team is investigating the issue.
The EA Help Twitter later tweeted out that the login issues that were being experienced by Apex Legends players had been resolved, but it is not clear whether or not it is in reference to the bans. Some players are also still reporting being banned from the game, so it seems to still be an ongoing issue. The accidental bans do come after a few other accidental issues that Apex Legends has experienced since the start of Season 9. Not only did the legend Wattson accidentally receive a massive nerf this season, but Apex Legends is also looking into an issue some epileptic players are having with the ammo for the new Bocek Bow.
There is no indication yet as to why the players are receiving the random bans, and it does seem a bit strange since the patch notes for the 1.68 update did not list any changes to the cheat detection or ban systems in Apex Legends. Hopefully, developer Respawn Entertainment can figure out what is happen and address it quickly so that players can get back to playing all of the new content added to Apex Legends in Season 9.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, Switch, and Xbox One.