Apex Legends will finally punish players for abandoning Arenas matches

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It's about dang time.

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

I've been enjoying Apex Legends' new 3v3 Arenas mode quite a bit the last few weeks, but holy cow, the mode has a major leavers problem. Respawn is hoping to remedy this in a patch deployed today that will start handing down penalties to players who abandon their team.

The penalties for leaving will match those already in place for Apex Legends ranked battle royale mode, which places players in a 10-minute timeout before they can play again. Respawn clarified that you'll only receive the penalty if you were in a full squad when you left the match, meaning you won't be punished for leaving after another teammate abandons first. Following the update, players will also be warned about abandon penalties before leaving a match.

Leavers are a problem in basically every multiplayer FPS, but they're particularly annoying in Apex Legends because missing players can't be replaced once they're gone. The new penalties signal that Respawn is taking the competitive integrity of Arenas seriously. Now all that we need is a proper 3v3 ranked mode.

Also included in this minor patch is a fix to the unintended Wattson nerf that wasn't slowing players that passed through her electric fences. An exploit that lets players purchase upgrades without enough credits has been corrected as well. After a brief break to fix some other exploits, Valkyrie has also been reactivated for use in the firing range.

Morgan Park
Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.