Apex Legends is a great game of choice if you’ve some free time to burn on a session or two, but venture into the battle royale’s ranked playlists and you’ll find an almost entirely different experience.
Here, serious competitors spend countless hours honing their skills and will stop at nothing to reach the pinnacle rank of Apex Predator, even if it means cheating to gain an unfair advantage. Apex Legends is far from the only game to attract such players, of course, but Respawn has notably struggled to stay on top of its prevalence in the past. Back around launch earlier this year, the shooter was, for want of a better term, infested with aimbots and other software meant to give unsavoury types a leg-up on the competition.
As its explosive initial popularity has worn off and player numbers have settled, the issue has calmed massively, but it’s far from being truly eradicated. Rather than a result of specially-designed software, however, the latest exploit affecting legitimate players in competitive modes requires little more than a few button presses.
By force-closing (Alt+F4) the game client mid-match, players have discovered that doing so prompts a ‘loss forgiveness’ feature to kick in, preventing any potential loss of Ranked Points. The loophole, therefore, allows players who believe they’re about to lose a match to quit early without incurring any penalty whatsoever. Respawn, it seems, has had enough of such flagrant abuse and has confirmed via social media that it is now taking action against heavy abusers of the exploit.
We've temporarily banned players detected to be heavy abusers of quitting the game to avoid penalties in Ranked. Going forward we will not hesitate to punish players who abuse new exploits and will increase penalties as we see fit, including permanent bans and revoking RP
— Drew McCoy (@DKo5) October 23, 2019
Presumably, as a means to account for accidental closures and the like, bans will only be issued once a repeat pattern has been noticed and, if affected players opt to continue cheating after their ban has expired, the developer says it won’t hesitate to dish out permanent bans and/or a rollback of Ranked Points. It’s a hardline stance that Apex Legends players will no doubt be happy to see, though the problem won’t truly be solved until a permanent fix is issued.
When that’ll be is anyone’s guess but for now, this is a welcome bandaid.
