Like any massive online multiplayer title, Apex Legends has its own share of players who don't exactly play fair. Thankfully, Respawn Entertainment, the development studio behind Apex Legends, is good about banning cheaters and implementing anti-cheat measures behind the scenes fairly often.
Unfortunately, there has been an increase in cheaters using DDoS attacks as of late in both Ranked and Public lobbies, which has been a source of frustration for many players. Thankfully, Respawn's head of security, Conor Ford, has tweeted out publicly that the team is hard at work banning Apex Legends players who have been behind the DDoS attacks.
Ford and the team at Respawn have been responding to evidence of these hackers on social media as of late, but it's taken a bit of time for Respawn to track down and start issuing the bans. However, yesterday evening, Ford sent out a tweet reading "Console reckoning for DDoSers and DDoS customers incoming. You can't hide any of it." DDoS attacks are sadly somewhat common in the gaming community, such as with the recent DDoS attack on LittleBigPlanet servers.
Luckily, it seems that Ford and the team at Respawn are confident that the method they are using to track these attacks is accurate and that the proper parties will be punished accordingly. Some of the evidence submitted to Ford on social media shows Trios teams standing still in a secluded area of the map, likely preparing the attacks and cheats that they would shortly unleash on the lobby. Additionally, many of these cheaters give themselves away by boasting ridiculous kill counts per game, with some cheaters even managing over 50 kills in one match. As such, many of these bans will likely affect high ranking players who got there through cheating.
Though the bans don't seem to be taking effect immediately from the sound of Ford's tweets, it seems like the bans will most likely start flooding in very soon. Respawn definitely deserves kudos for the speed at which the team tackles many of the issues Apex Legends players report online. Whether it be exploits, evidence of cheating, or various bug fixes through updates, Respawn is generally speedy with the rate at which the team handles these community issues. Sadly, it seems like more and more cheaters keep cropping up around the Apex Legends player base.
It's not just the inconspicuous players who have been guilty of cheating in Apex Legends, either. Just a few months ago at the start of the year, two of the top Apex Legends players were banned for abusing cheats. Once again, Ford gave evidence via his social media page that the cheaters were indeed banned. Provided that Ford and the rest of the team were able to catch the majority of players responsible for the DDoS attacks, Apex Legends players will hopefully have a smoother time playing with one another online.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.