Ban galore: Apex Legends has banned over 355k PC accounts for cheating

Respawn Entertainment have vowed to improve the cheat-busting tech in Apex Legends, though it seems to be doing pretty well already considering they say they've banned over 355,000 accounts since launch five weeks ago. It's good to see Titanfall's free-to-play battle royale spin-off slam so many bans, as the low cost of entry on F2P games is like poo to a fly. In this powerful simile, cheaters are flies who eat poo. Also outside the metaphor they eat poo, irl. Respawn also plan to thwart ne'er-do-wells who join matches to spam ads during character selection then leave.

Respawn announced over the weekend that they've passed 355k bans on PC through the Easy Anti-Cheat software, which certainly qualifies as a big number.

"The service works but the fight against cheaters is an ongoing war that we'll need to continue to adapt to and be very vigilant about fighting," they say. "We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players."

Given that cheats and anti-cheats are an endless arms race where any information could lead to breakthroughs, Respawn are secretive about what exactly they plan to do. They do note that they plan to expand their own anti-cheat team, consult with other experts within Electronic Arts, and add an in-game reporting feature. Beyond that, shhh it's a secret.

I have seen Apex Legends bans slapped on several people I trust enough to believe their protestations that they weren't cheating, mind, which does seem a problem.

They're similarly secretive about what they plan to do about the jerks who gum up games by joining matches, spamming links and ads (often for cheats), then leave once the round actually starts. Unlike with cheats, they don't have strong progress to report so far but are working on it.

"We're keeping a lot of our strategy close to the chest so offenders don’t have time to build workarounds before we implement changes," they said. "Solutions won't happen right away but we're on it."

Respawn also note that they're working on fixing crashes, with several fixes coming in the next patch. They're having AMD visit to help improve stability and performance too.

Don't expect a reconnect feature, mind. Respawn say it would be prone to abuse, and they "believe the resources needed to build, test, and release it are better spent focused on fixing stability issues so that the feature isn't necessary."

I'm told I should include the pun "ban galore" so there you go.