Apex Legends should be a safer place to play now that Respawn has banned over 2000 players across all platforms, but the PS4 community appears to have been especially plagued by toxic players. The vast majority of the cheating Apex Legends players caught in this recent ban wave came from the PS4 platform alone.
According to Conor Ford, a developer at Respawn who runs security for Apex Legends, a total of 2,086 players have been banned for abusing exploits found in the game's ranked mode. Of that number, a total of 1,965 bans were delivered to PS4 players. This isn't the first time Apex Legends bans have targeted a specific demographic, but last time it was due to cultural and linguistic differences--this time, it appears the PS4 community was simply overrun with "dashboarding" cheaters.
"Dashboarding" refers to a specific loss forgiveness exploit where players forcibly shut the game down after losing a match to avoid losing RP, allowing them to keep a high rank well after they should have lost it. However, this isn't the only exploit the Apex Legends PS4 community appears to have engaged in. The second exploit that the banned players were taking advantage of is a matchmaking exploit that let high-rank players sneak into the Bronze lobby to take on less experienced players so they can farm points. The issue of highly skilled players targeting less experienced ones was previously mentioned in a catchy song about Apex Legends' problems.
Ford clarified that these are matchmaking bans and that they will have varying lengths depending on how much the player in question abused the exploits. However, it's likely that these banned players will miss the opening of the new season. To this, Ford simply states that banned players should come back next time and play the game the way it's meant to be played instead of trying to take advantage of the game's systems--and other players, for that matter. These bans rolled out around the same time that Respawn fixed another Apex Legends glitch that was preventing Apex Packs from giving out items.
This information has caused a bit of a stir on Twitter, where Apex Legends players appear to be responding to the bans in a variety of ways. Some users appear to be happy about or at least grimly satisfied by Respawn's attempt to crack down on cheating. However, several users claim they were banned despite not using these exploits, and others question why so many bans were concentrated on the PS4 community. One user responded to those questions by explaining that "dashboarding" only works on PS4, which would explain the disproportionate ban numbers. Apex Legends' Ranked Arena mode has eSports potential, so it would make sense if Respawn wanted to clamp down on the cheating affecting this mode.
Apex Legends is available on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.