Respawn brings in outside help to combat cheating in Apex Legends

The struggle against cheating in Apex Legends has been going back and forth since the game’s release. In the recent state of the game update, Respawn reaffirmed that dealing with hackers is their primary concern. Today they put out some numbers to back up that statement.

The update comes from lead developer Drew McCoy. He explains that Respawn has joined forces with a number of outside specialists to combat cheating in Apex. That includes developers and security experts from EA Security and Fraud, Easy Anti-Cheat, DICE, FIFA, and Capital Games.

According to Respawn, the studio is countering hackers with a number of different measures. Those include better detection, improved tools and processes, and “other sneaky things to combat sellers and cheaters.”

Cheating on PC reduced by more than 50 percent

McCoy states that the in-game reporting system has been very impactful in discovering new cheats, “including previously undetectable cheats that are now being found automatically.” That implies that player-submitted feedback is important to the effort’s success.

Some of the statistical highlights of the effort so far:

• EA has banned 770,000 cheaters from Apex Legends.
• More than 300,000 account creation attempts have been blocked.
• Over 4,000 cheat-seller accounts have been banned over the last 20 days. If you’ve never encountered one, these are bot accounts who spam links to cheat-seller sites before a match starts. Afterward, they immediately disconnect. This is obviously pretty obnoxious. But it also makes the game harder to play, as players would start the match with one or both of their teammates missing.
• Respawn’s efforts have reduced the number of PC matches affected by cheaters or spammers by over 50 percent.

The post also reminds readers that Respawn is not making all of their anti-cheating efforts public. This is intentional, to prevent hackers from getting ahead of the studio in the information war. Still, McCoy also promised to follow up with another update on the matter next week.