A new season of Apex Legends means a lot of things for its playerbase. A new playable character (in this instance Fuse), a new weapon, a new Battle Pass, map changes, and, unfortunately, at least one new glitch or bug. And this one is particularly aggravating, as it's trapping players in an infinite loading screen.
The problem has been reported on the EA Help forums and, to be more specific, the bug occurs on the intro screen. Players have been trying to enter a lobby to play online, only to find themselves thrown back to the intro screen. So, while it technically doesn't leave players trapped on the loading screen itself, they are effectively unable to play online at all.
Judging by comments made by those who have been experiencing the bug, it's not limited to any one version of Apex Legends and has occurred on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One copies of the game. What's worse is that, unlike other game errors, there is no error code to report.
Interestingly enough, there is already a workaround to deal with the issue until Respawn fixes it and it seems to suggest that the bug is related to players' accounts rather than the game itself. Some players have reported that they were able to join lobbies fine by using secondary accounts. So, for the time being, anyone who experiences the bug should just swap over to their back-up account or make a second one if they haven't done so already.
At the time of writing, Respawn hasn't commented on the issue but it is hopefully already working on fixing it. With any luck, it will be resolved sooner rather than later as Season 8 marks Apex Legends' second anniversary and it would be a shame for such an important milestone to become mired with something that's actively preventing people from playing the game.
Respawn is admittedly plenty busy with other aspects of Apex Legends at the moment. The developers have suggested that they've been doing a lot of playtesting for specific characters like Loba and Lifeline as well as potential new modes that could be added to the battle royale.
Many fans have been hopeful for a team deathmatch mode of some sort and recent leaks may even point to its existence. Nothing has been confirmed obviously but a recent Reddit AMA saw one of the developers say that the team is looking into expanding the play space for Apex Legends.
Apex Legends is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.