Apex Legends players exposed for “teaming” to get rare 4K Damage badge

Players have noticed a growing trend in Apex Legends, with some people “teaming” in order to obtain the highly sought-after 4K Damage badge.

Respawn Entertainment loaded their battle royale with a ton of badges for players to unlock, but the particularly challenging Wrath Level 4 badges require someone to deal 4,000 damage in a single game. Since they are specific to every Legend, they’re colloquially known as “4k badges.”

The badge demands someone to get super aggro from the very start of a game, since even a match-winning team can have players topping out at only 2500 damage or below.

However, the fanbase has been noticing “4K badges lately, often on average skilled players,” which started to raise some eyebrows.

A couple of recorded instances have surfaced online, in which a player’s squad is “teaming” with other people. Since there’s a max of three members to a squad in Apex Legends, two friends load by themselves into a match, with others linking up with them while on another team.

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“After solo queuing, I ended up in a team with those two players who had a friend join the same game in a different team,” Reddit user ‘Yurishirox’ said of their own experience against a “teaming” player. “… Using Lifeline for heals and Wattson for endless shield recharging, [allowed them] to ‘earn’ the 4k damage badge.”

The kill feed in the clip above shows the same names appearing then reappearing as Yurishirox looks from a distance, lest they get lumped with the cheaters if they get caught.

Another instance recorded by user ‘goldfish18’ captured a similar event, where a group of players are huddled around, repeatedly knocking each other down.

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“This Pathfinder was knocked and revived over 40 times while I was spectating,” goldfish18 said. “Totals about 5,000 damage from that Caustic alone. It’s too bad there isn’t a way to report things like this in game on PS4.”

The exploit has been drawing a lot of attention from the Apex community, as some are starting to notice the allure of the badge diminish due to the rise of teamers.

Respawn have been vocal about punishing cheaters in the past with an upcoming “Judgement day” punishment in the works, so it’ll be interesting to see if they tackle the issue of the 4k badge exploit.