Respawn’s Already Banned Over 355K Apex Legends Players

Just like Epic did before it with Fortnite, Respawn Entertainment has made a huge splash in the battle royale genre. Since launching near the start of February, the developer’s latest effort, Apex Legends, has been the talk of the gaming industry, bringing in tens of thousands of viewers on streaming platforms like Twitch – even taking the crown from its competitor on more than a few occasions – and already boasting a whopping 50 million players.

That’s a ton of people all logging in and giving the game a spin, and seeing how competitive Apex Legends is, it’s only natural that everyone’s looking to get an edge up on their opponents. But as is always the case when it comes to the industry, some folks are doing a little too much to ensure they’re victorious and are now resorting to cheating. Obviously, that’s not something anyone wants in their game and Respawn is thankfully taking some steps to put an end to it.

Over on Reddit, the developer announced that more than 355,000 players have been banned already and their “fight against cheaters” is still ongoing. Promising more improvements and measures to come, it’s clear that Respawn’s serious about the situation and intends to do everything they can to make Apex Legends a clean environment for gamers to compete in.

For more, here’s their post in full:

As of today we’ve banned over 355K players on PC through Easy-Anti-Cheat. 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. We take cheating very seriously and care deeply about the health of Apex Legends for all players.

We are working on improvements to combat cheaters and we’re going to have to be pretty secretive about our plans. Cheaters are crafty and we don’t want them to see us coming. With that said, we can share some high levels things we’re doing:

• We are reaching out and working directly with experts, both within and outside of EA, in this area that we can learn from.

• Scaling up our anti-cheat team so we have more dedicated resources.

• We are adding a report feature on PC to report cheaters in game that goes directly to Easy-Anti-Cheat.​

So again, it’s clear that Respawn’s well aware of the problem and no doubt in the weeks to come, we’ll see them taking even more steps to prevent cheaters from ruining the experience for others. And that can only be a good thing. Well, except for those who find themselves banned, that is.

In other news, Apex Legends is also set to introduce 10 – count ’em, 10 – new characters, the details of which can be found here. The first one will likely be Octane, who’s expected to arrive this week with the game’s first Battle Pass. None of that’s been confirmed by Respawn, mind you, but with a March 12th launch date rumored, expect to learn more soon.