Apex Legends’ Season 8 is just mere days away, and it looks like the season will start with a clean slate, as hundreds of high-ranking players caught cheating are getting hit with the ban hammer.
Apex Legends developer Respawn Entertainment has dealt with its fair share of prominent cheaters in the past, and has proven it has no sympathy for those trying to exploit its game. Last year, Respawn banned the number 4 Predator Ranked player for using an aimbot. It was reported in 2019 that Respawn has banned over 700,000 cheaters, so surely by now, that number has doubled if not tripled.
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Yesterday, Respawn Head of Apex Security Connor Ford tweeted that he will be banning “about 240 people that are platinum and above.” When asked in the replies if this new set of bans is region-specific, Ford that the bans will cover all regions. All one has to do is scroll through Ford’s Twitter replies to see that they are regularly banning multiple cheaters per day, and that's not even including more traditional forms of reporting players, like using the report form on the official Apex website, or the Report Player button built into the game itself.
Many have asked how players can make it so high up the Apex ladder without getting banned or even caught by anti-cheat software, but the problem is that the methods of cheating are often hard to detect and constantly changing. The average player may not even know that they are going up against someone using an aimbot, for example, and may just chalk up the cheater's wins, kills, or stats to skill. There are also players who either just accept that there will always be cheaters or assume that someone else has or will report them.
Respawn patches out openings for exploits frequently, like the exploit that allowed players to fire their weapons inside Pathfinder’s Town Takeover. But it can be hard to know where there is an opening that allows someone to use cheats until someone uses it to cheat. The problem is while game developers may be working on creating new methods of cheat detection, there is the developer of the cheats on the other end working actively against them. It can become a back-and-forth battle, and so relying on player reports may be the most effective solution until another one is found.
Hopefully, this large ban wave of high-level players will ensure Season 8 of Ranked will be a more level playing field when it starts this week. Ranked is receiving several changes in Season 8 to matchmaking and ranking up, like dealing Ranked Points to the top 13 in a match instead of the top 10. Respawn also detailed plans to make sure that Ranked matches have fewer outliers that are too far outside the average rank of the players in the match. Diamond skydive trails are also returning for those who reach Diamond in Season 8. Season 8 begins on Tuesday, February 2.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with Mobile and Switch versions in development.