Respawn unleashed the banhammer after Apex Legends players discovered a way to cheat the ranked system by quitting the game early.
Respawn project lead Drew McCoy addressed repercussions for PC players who abuse the quit exploit in a tweet yesterday. The company “will not hesitate” to dole out punishments for any new exploits that are discovered as well.
“We’ve temporarily banned players detected to be heavy abusers of quitting the game to avoid penalties in Ranked,” McCoy said. “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 [ranked points].”
To avoid penalizing players for being disconnected from the game, Respawn added loss forgiveness to make up for any server or game errors. This way, players wouldn’t lose ranked points for a glitch or a teammate abandoning them.
It was then discovered that quitting out of a ranked match using “Alt + F4” would force players out of a ranked match and it’d be detected as a game error. Common practice was to quit a game after both your teammates went down, saving those delicious ranked points (RP).
Any heavy abusers of this exploit are being targeted and Respawn promises to punish players who find new glitches as well. While the quit exploit punishments are temporary bans, Respawn may permanently ban players in the future or revoke their RP.
While many players are happy that Respawn is tightening the reins, others worry they might be banned for game crashes that appear suspicious.
“Please don’t be rash with this,” one player tweeted to McCoy. “My game freezes so much and I have to force quit to do anything because it can sit there indefinitely and not do anything.”
Another player claimed to have suffered from game crashes as well and was allegedly permanently banned for it.
“My game was [crashing] like every 4 games id play and i was perm banned,” the player claims. “Account had all seasons maxed was even pred and owned both heirlooms.”
Respawn senior designer Chin Xiang Chong said that if the unlucky player was wrongly banned, the company will sort it out.
Apex’s first two seasons involved tons of cheaters, including aimbotters and players abusing Wraith’s phasing to avoid ring damage. Respawn seeks to nip that in the bud for season three.
