Apex Legends fans were ecstatic when Three Strikes was confirmed to return after the Final Fantasy Rebirth collaboration, but instead of getting the fast-paced chaotic fights that revolved around team revives and respawns, they got a glorified hide-and-seek game mode, all thanks to one peculiar bug.
One day after the return of Three Strikes, Respawn issued a patch that fixed the final ring closing on Storm Point when playing the Three Strikes LTM, among other fixes. Three Strikes is played on all battle royale maps in rotation, but the bug only affected matches taking place on Storm Point, where the ring fails to close all the way after round five. With no server time limit to automatically end the game, players who expected a standard 20 minute game could be stuck in a game for hours until they quit or found the last squad hiding somewhere in the ring.
Three Strikes first appeared on Nov. 7 as part of the Post Malone event, featuring a new twist on the standard battle royale format. All squads were given three team lives, and upon squad wipe, the eliminated team would respawn from the drop ship with all of their gear and current shield level near the POI that they died at, allowing them to quickly get back into the fight.
To encourage teams to be aggressive and seek out fights, Three Strikes decreased the revive time from five seconds to one second, and upon revival, 70 health would be restored compared to the usual 20, encouraging a new meta that revolved around support legends, like Lifeline, to guarantee resurrections and prolong team fights.
However, Three Strikes’ return in 2024 didn’t go flawlessly, as players soon found out when loading into Storm Point. Due to an unfortunate bug, instead of announcing the final ring location and time before closing in on the entire map, the ring would completely stop after the fifth round, with the in-game countdown timer pausing at zero seconds.
This allowed for an infinite stalling tactic if no team was able to locate where the reviving duo or team was outside of the ring, as they could hide anywhere on the map without repercussions. As the ring didn’t fully close due to the bug, players standing outside would take 20 damage per second, which would normally prove fatal, but due to Three Strikes’ faster reviving speed, it became a viable tactic that allowed nefarious teams to drag out games.
Community members and even pros started posting games lasting from 30 minutes to over an hour, comparing their experience closer to hide and seek, rather than the original intended Three Strikes game mode. Even if a “ratting” team was discovered, if they had any extra lives, they would simply respawn off the drop ship and restart the chase, leading to inflated damage numbers and match lengths for all players involved.
Thankfully, Respawn heard the community’s cries over what’s considered the best LTM in Apex history and fixed the issue within one day, allowing matches to naturally progress and end as previously intended.
Additional changes that were included alongside the Three Strikes fixes in the latest Apex patch include the disabling of chain config files while in-game, a follow-up to the latest crackdown on third party software cheating.
