Encountering cheaters in an online multiplayer game is never fun—and that’s no different in Apex Legends. But Respawn is working to make it a little bit better.
Design director Jason McCord discussed cheaters in a Respawn Responds video today, detailing a few things that the devs are doing to combat it. While McCord couldn’t go into too much detail out of risk of “sharing… war strategy with the enemy,” he pointed out what’s in the works to make encountering hackers an easier pill to swallow.
“We are currently looking into what we can do for players that have had their game impacted by a cheater,” McCord said. “This may look something like retroactive loss forgiveness, where you’ll get your RP back if we find you had a cheater in your ranked match.”
Loss forgiveness would give players back the precious RP they lost because of a cheater, lowering the impact a hacker has on your rank. McCord also mentioned a feature that would let players know if someone they reported for cheating is banned. This would likely look similar to the “instant feedback report” from Riot Games’ League of Legends, which alerts you when a player you reported is issued consequences.
And Respawn is “ramping up enforcement” for players who are getting boosted by a hacker. This should make detection more effective, even if that player isn’t actively cheating themselves.
As for SMS verification to log in or play ranked, fans “won’t see it soon.” While this feature would potentially limit cheaters in Apex, Respawn found there are better ways to spend its efforts to get better results.
“It’s important for players to know we’ve got people on this full-time,” McCord said. “Any time that there feels like there’s a surge [of cheaters] and we know that it’s so frustrating… there will be a surge of bans the next day.”
McCord didn’t issue an exact time frame for these features.
