Respawn’s Trusty Apex Legends Banhammer Has Already Crushed 355,000 Cheaters

Apex Legends is one of those super-rare games that seems to come along out of nowhere, and then strikes the right chord with millions upon millions of gamers a mere month after its launch -- over 50 million gamers and counting, in fact. In 2019, it certainly helps to have the phrases "battle royale" and "free-to-play" tied to a game, but developer Respawn has proven once again that "free" games can be great. It takes a good game to hook gamers, and take on Goliaths in the industry, like Fortnite.

There are many ways developers of successful games can prolong that success. Actually listening to the concerns of the fan base is key, as is taking care of any bugs or community issues within the game as quickly as possible. In Apex Legends' case, cheaters are definitely one of those community issues. Fortunately, Respawn isn't content with sweeping things under the rug, proven by the fact that the company has banned an impressive 355,000 cheaters on the PC version of the game alone so far.

Few people are going to appreciate the fact that anti-cheating software is running on their computer when they have no intention of cheating, but the sad reality is that it helps. In this game's case, Easy-Anti-Cheat is used, and who can argue against its effectiveness when it has taken down over 355,000 cheaters? Easy-Anti-Cheat has the kind of K/D ratio top Twitch gamers dream of, ironically.

The developer acknowledges, though, that it can do more than simply run software that will detect cheaters. It says that it is reaching out and working with experts both inside and outside of EA to glean useful knowledge, as well as building its anti-cheat team up to dedicate more resources at the problem. There are also plans to add a report feature on the PC version, to help oust problematic players quicker.

As for the whole spamming players at the character screen issue? Respawn is also on top of that, although it admits that there are currently no quick solutions to roll out for it that just yet.

In the same reddit thread where all of this detail was conveyed, the company notes that performance and stability improvements are also coming. The developer was recently visited by NVIDIA dev relations team members to help tune the game better, and this week, the studio will be visited by AMD for the same reason.

This initial support from Respawn seems very encouraging for the future of Apex Legends, and we hope that it continues. Who knew battle royale would spawn so much competition within this new genre of gameplay?