Apex Legends fans hoping to celebrate the 4th of July with a marathon gaming session in Olympus had to find entertainment elsewhere over the weekend.
The no-doubt-intentionally-timed hostile takeover of the battle royale’s playlists took place yesterday, replacing the usual main menu options with one simple message: “save Titanfall.” While no individual has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack, text inserted into the game redirected users to a website using the very same slogan which, while seemingly unaffiliated with the hacker(s), exists to shine a light on the current plight being faced by players of the first-person shooter.
For those uninformed, the original installment of Respawn’s popular series has been in what the site claims to be an unplayable state for some time due to the prevalence of DDoS attacks. Because the single-player component of Titanfall requires a constant internet connection – which DDoSing essentially prevents – to access and play, publisher EA is being accused of knowingly selling a faulty product despite having been made repeatedly aware of the problems.
Following numerous investigations culminating in a server update, service has since been restored, though, with a total downtime of around 10 hours for those affected, the developer has somewhat unsurprisingly caught flak for the hiccup. A resolution has been achieved, then, but the debacle will assuredly be embarrassing for Respawn, especially as it’s already under a great deal of pressure due to the abundance of cheaters running rampant in Apex Legends.
Whether the studio’s promises of hiring more staff and upgrading its anti-cheat software to combat the issue serve to remedy such issues in the long term remains to be seen, but this could well prove to be the egg-on-face moment needed to expedite the process for the good of all gamers. Watch this space for further updates.