Respawn Has Banned 770,000 Joy-Sapping Apex Legends Cheaters

Cheating is a big problem in many online games but is especially rampant in battle royale games like Apex Legends and Fortnite. EA is working very hard behind the scenes to improve Apex Legends, and part of the way it is working to improve is by catching and kicking cheaters off the game.

Apex Legends dev Respawn has been working with EA Security and Fraud, the Origin teams, and developers at DICE, FIFA, and Capital Games along with Easy-Anti-Cheat to continue the cheater cleanup. The team notes that several updates have been rolled out already to stop cheats, but others will take time to implement. Respawn won't talk about all the things it is working on because it doesn't want cheat makers to have a heads up on what is in the works.

What the team will say about the anti-cheating stuff they are working on is that they are working on improvements for detecting cheaters, improvements to resources and tools, and improving processes and other things to combat cheat sellers and users. The recently added in-game reporting tool has had a "big impact" on discovering new cheats including previously undetectable cheats that are now found via Easy-Anti-Cheat.

Total bans for cheating are now at 770,000 players, and there have been over 300,000 account creations blocked. Over 4,000 cheat selling accounts have been banned in the last 20 days. Apex Legends devs also claim that total PC matches impacted by cheaters or spammers has been cut in half over the last month due to recent efforts.

In March, Apex Legends devs noted that they were handing out permanent hardware bans to cheaters. Apex Legends got a new hero called Octane with a focus on speed in March. Respawn has been working on Apex Legends so intently that it has decided to put a Titanfall sequel on the back burner for now.