Apex Legends players have had enough of cheaters ruining their enjoyment and rightly so. Ever since launch, the battle royale has found itself confronting an increasingly prevalent cheating problem and Respawn, to its credit, has poured countless resources into tackling the issue. Like any deep-rooted infestation, however, receiving the all-clear is never achieved in one fell swoop. Indeed, despite a sizable drop in popularity and player numbers, some cheaters and spammers seemingly refuse to let go and leave the legitimate player base in peace.
With Season 2 no doubt demanding all hands on deck over the last several weeks, the dilemma has been somewhat left on the backburner recently. It appears that’s no longer the case, though. In its latest address to fans over on Reddit, the developer acknowledges a torrent of reports currently being directed its way and subsequently provides several proposed tweaks going forward.
“We know reports of cheaters, especially in Ranked, have been a hot topic,” reads the statement, adding “so this week we also wanted to provide a little visibility into some of the work that’s been going on behind the scenes to combat cheating.”
Top of the mission list, so to speak, will come as no surprise. Outright banning cheaters is the most efficient way of ensuring a cleaner play environment, no doubt, but it’s a time-consuming process. Respawn, however, believes it has found the answer in machine learning. By using it to create behaviour models and patterns attributable to rogue players, the system will, in the future, be able to dole out auto bans without assistance.
A good start, for sure, but far from a catch-all. In any case, you can check out the full list below:
- Using machine learning to create behaviour models that detect and auto-ban cheaters.
- Requiring TFA in certain regions on high-risk accounts.
- Improving detection that identifies and bans new spam accounts before they are used.
- Ongoing work to adapt to new cheats.
- Matchmaking that matches detected cheaters and spammers together.
- Investigating how people party up for matches. Even if you are not specifically using a cheat, partying up with cheaters is still cheating.
- Increasing resources whether that be people or tech.
I must admit, the idea of restricting such crowds to matchmaking only with others of their ilk sounds like a special streaming event in the making. What could be more entertaining than watching a bunch of Apex Legends cheaters get a taste of their own medicine?
