EA claims Apex Legends will “prioritize” cheater bans with anti-cheat improvement

EA has confirmed that Apex Legends has “prioritized” the fight against cheaters as they look to tone down toxicity even further moving forward. 

Just like plenty of other multiplayer games, Apex Legends has had its fair share of headaches with cheaters and hackers ruining matches in the battle royale. 

Respawn have constantly made strides to tackle these problems including rolling out massive ban waves to takedown some notorious cheaters. However, players have constantly been urging the developers to implement an improved anti-cheat moving forward. 

The feedback is something that Respawn has taken onboard, as the devs have said they’ve got “very exciting” changes up their sleeve as tackling cheaters is the priority for the popular battle royale. 

Apex Legends looking to ban more cheaters to battle toxicity

It was something Chris Bruzzo, EA’s chief experience officer, touched on during a recent chat with IGN Africa just before the new year, noting that the Apex team is tackling toxicity in a number of ways – with banning cheaters topping the list. 

“We find that when games are buggy or have cheaters in them, so when there’s no good anti-cheat or when the anti-cheat is falling behind, especially in competitive games, one of the root causes of a huge percentage of toxicity is when players feel like the environment is unfair. That they cannot fairly compete. And what happens is, it angers them,” Bruzzo said.

“Because suddenly you’re realizing that there’s others who are breaking the rules and the game is not controlling for that rule-breaking behavior. But you love this game and you’ve invested a lot of your time and energy into it. It’s so upsetting. So we have prioritized addressing cheaters as one of the best ways for us to reduce toxicity in games.”

As noted, improvements to anti-cheat is something that the Apex community has sought for a while, and it appears things will be kicked up a notch in 2023. 

It might not get to a level that everyone wants, but both Respawn and EA are looking into changes, which is progress enough.