Apex Legends has rolled out another ban wave to combat hackers and cheaters ruining matches in Season 8. Developers Respawn Entertainment have also vowed to step-up anti-cheat efforts across the board, but particularly in some regions.
Not unlike any other competitive online shooter, hackers always find a way to ruin things for honest players in Apex Legends.
In recent months, players in Asian servers specifically have reported an uptick in hackers, even prompting some top players to avoid ranked play entirely until it’s resolved.
Respawn’s head of security, Conor Ford, has confirmed another ban wave on February 23, wiping over 600 cheaters from the servers.
Apex ban wave catches cheaters
Ford, better known as Hideouts on social media, confirmed a manual ban wave of 652 cheaters on February 23.
652 cheaters manually/individually banned today. Am tired. 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 been using an RP glitch to gain free ranked points. The ban for those users will only last until Season 9 though, when they will be allowed to play again.
To the 507 PS4 that were banned for exploiting an RP glitch in ranked and farming free RP, maybe we'll see some of you in Season 9. Until then, enjoy your time off from Apex and do something actually productive instead of cheating, lol ♥️🔨
— Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) February 10, 2021
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Cheaters ruining Apex in Japan
Counter to popular belief, Hideouts is not the only person in control of banning players on Apex Legends. There are also automated systems in place to catch out hackers.
Unfortunately, it appears that hordes of cheats have been able to bypass these protections on servers in Asia especially.
Hideouts has responded to these issues too, saying that they will be focused on clearing up servers in the Japanese region specifically. Japan is the second-largest market for Apex Legends.
こんにちはTo all of my friends and Legends in Japan, I hear you and am just as tired of the cheaters on your servers as you are. I am dedicating a lot of my time this week to specifically focus on cleaning out your servers. Send everything my way, we will fight this together♥️🔨
— Conor Ford / Hideouts (@RSPN_Hideouts) February 16, 2021
In a follow-up Tweet, the developer also confirmed that there are “plans in place, that will be announced relatively soon, to help better this problem.”
We await the announcement of these plans, but it certainly sounds like Respawn have things in the pipeline to help crackdown on cheaters even more.
