Apex Legends has unfortunately been practically run by cheaters in many past seasons, and despite the efforts of the security team, they’re back again in season 20, forcing pro players and streamers to take matters into their own hands.
A stream clip from Complexity Gaming’s Trenton “lou” Clements shows his squad, alongside several other teams of Apex Legends pro players hiding in the same Olympus building from a cheater. Recognizing that trying to take down the cheater alone was futile, all of the pros banded together and joined a voice call to coordinate an effort to eliminate the cheater from the lobby. However, despite the overwhelming numbers used to overcome the aimbot and wallhacks, the cheater was still able to teleport away to safety before deliberately crashing the server for all players involved.
The pros in the clip had a good chuckle about the situation and how one cheater brought the entire lobby together, but the state of Apex’s ranked ladder is anything but a laughing matter. With the release of season 20, cheaters have steadily risen up in numbers, and despite Repsawn’s steady ban waves in past seasons, Breakout has revealed the most egregious and blatant abuse of the game’s systems.
Multiple pros and content creators have posted videos showcasing cheaters in action, which has affected both PC and console lobbies. Aimbots are sadly the most commonly seen cheat, but are now paired with additional exploits such as creating player-hunting bots, flying, and even a modified version of the removed movement technique punch boosting, allowing cheaters to soar across the map and quickly eliminate players before they have a chance to react.
Even when a cheater has been identified in a lobby, they can go virtually unpunished, as DDoS attacks and server crashes not only end the lobby for everyone involved, but hits all affected players with an abandon penalty, locking them out of matchmaking and losing ranked points. Lou’s stream clip showcases this problem firsthand, where the cheater loses their shields after the entire pro squad attacks them, then proceeds to crash the server, rather than giving the streamers the smallest satisfaction of eliminating them.
Season 20 of Apex launched with positive acclaim for new gameplay systems like legend armor and mid-match upgrades, alongside a substantial increase in communication and hotfixes from Respawn concerning weapon and legend balance changes. The only major criticism is this newest wave of cheaters, but the lack of communication or acknowledgement from Respawn about the problem still has many players holding off on even trying to play ranked, which has historically been Apex‘s most popular mode.
With the amount of ALGS pros and streamers affected and actively posting about these exploits with clear video proof and account names, Respawn will likely roll out account bans and a permanent fix to the new insecurities soon. Until then, the duty will continue to fall upon the pros’ own improvised supersized squads to take care of the problem themselves.
