Apex Legends' trios briefly doubled in size this week

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Respawn fixed the bug fairly quickly, but isn't against trying it properly in the future.

Apex Legends Season 9 Legacy Arenas
(Image credit: Respawn Entertainment)

A misconfigured server setting briefly saw Apex Legends' team sizes bumped up to five at the start of this week's Genesis Collection Event—and while Respawn was quick to patch the issue, the developer hasn't written off trying larger squads properly in the future.

Alongside the new limited-time cosmetics, this week saw the return of two classic maps to Apex Legends and a pretty hefty set of balance changes. That's a lot to change in one day, though one unintended tweak saw players surprised to discover their teams were a little larger than usual.

"We had a little misconfiguration on the server and every team was size of 5, should be super fixed now," live technical designer Aaron L wrote in response. "Not going to lie, that looks super fun for a game or two."

Despite noting a count of 5, many players found themselves pushing over that with 6-person teams, leading to curious situations that saw some players cropped out of their own victory screens.

Response to this bug has been surprisingly positive, with players on Reddit clamouring for it to be brought back in one form or another. Apex has previously experimented with differing team sizes too, with limited-time solo queues and a now-permanent duos mode. 

L does promise to "make sure the leads hears about this feedback", though he does note that this doesn't guarantee we'll ever be dropping in 5-person squads. Let's hope for the best, though—after all, I'd be far more confident in hot-dropping Skulltown knowing I had five extra pairs of eyes watching my back

Natalie Clayton
Natalie Clayton
Features Producer

20 years ago, Nat played Jet Set Radio Future for the first time, and she's not stopped thinking about games since. Joining PC Gamer in 2020, she comes from three years of freelance reporting at Rock Paper Shotgun, Waypoint, VG247 and more. Embedded in the European indie scene and a part-time game developer herself, Nat is always looking for a new curiosity to scream about—whether it's the next best indie darling, or simply someone modding a Scotmid into Black Mesa. She also unofficially appears in Apex Legends under the pseudonym Horizon.