Respawn promises to crack down harder on Apex Legends cheaters

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The developer is 'pursuing several options' to bolster Apex Legends' anti-cheat efforts.

valkyrie apex
(Image credit: Respawn Entertainment)

Apex Legends is a really good battle royale, but like so many popular online games, it has a problem with cheaters. Pop around to the Apex subreddit and you can find all kinds of complaints about players breaking the rules instead of competing fairly, over the past few months the game has also been struggling with DDoS problems. Thankfully, Respawn said on Twitter today that it is "pursuing several options to crack down on cheating."

Those options include:

  • Hiring more people to bolster its ability to manually ban cheaters
  • Developing new tools to automatically detect and stop DDoS attacks
  • Look into new ways "to more quickly catch and remove cheaters from games"

"Playing against cheaters sucks," Respawn tweeted. "We'll keep you updated as we ship the above changes and pursue new ones."

As updates go, there's really not much to see, especially when compared to detailed anti-cheat updates and reports from games like Call of Duty: Warzone and Rainbow Six Siege. But that doesn't reflect a lack of aggressiveness on Respawn's part when it comes to dealing with cheaters: In March it dropped the hammer on more than 700 high-ranked Apex players, including over 180 at the Diamond and Predator ranks—the top two ranks in Apex Legends competitive play—and in May it warned that players exploiting a "ghost rock" bug is a bannable offense.

Apex's recent bump in popularity (thanks in part to Season 9 being really fun) makes it a larger target than ever for cheaters looking for an easy win and Respawn will have to crank up its efforts to keep up.

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.