Apex Legends hacked to protest Titanfall server hacks

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Matchmaking was broken for many players.

An image of a hacked Apex Legends lobby with a message to "save titanfall"
(Image credit: Respawn, u/MinusPlep)

Broad reports from players across social media outlined a hacking attack on Apex Legends servers that left the game unplayable, instead replacing server playlists with a message about Titanfall, Respawn's previous game series. "SAVETITANFALL.COM, TF1 is being attacked so is Apex," said the message. Players also received an "Important Message" popup after matches reading "Visit and repost savetitanfall.com". 

The "savetitanfall.com" website has a message indicating that the site, and the Discord servers listed on it, are "in no way associated with the recent Apex Legends hack."

The savetitanfall.com website, which has been up for a few months now, is designed to draw attention to Titanfall, a game which has been generally unplayable for years now due to a plague of hackers who take down the servers and spam those lobbies that do start with bots. As Titanfall is a multiplayer-only game, this leaves the game—which is still widely on sale—generally unplayable. A few weeks of uptime have popped up every once in a while over the past few months, most notably following a promise by Respawn that "help is coming."

Despite that promise, the servers have still dropped in and out regularly. Game servers have been dropping out regularly since 2018, according to members of the Titanfall Remnant Fleet community, leaving the game unplayable for weeks at a time. The outages started long before Titanfall made its way to Steam late last year, though the Steam forums are flooded with posts saying the game is unplayable.

Following this story's initial publication, Respawn tweeted that it was investigating the issue and then put out a server update that it says has fixed the problem. Respawn also stated that "this attack—while disruptive—has not put players' personal information or accounts at risk."

This isn't the first hacking problem to hit Apex Legends. Earlier this year, Respawn pledged to take steps to address those hacking and DDoS attack problems as well. 

In May, Respawn Entertainment's communications director Ryan K. Rigney tweeted about the frustrations of dealing with these hackers. Rigney said that "weeks of work" are required to address each new exploit.

PC Gamer has reached out to EA and Respawn about the situation with Apex Legends, and will update if we receive a response.

Jonathan Bolding
Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.