Simple Valorant-style anti-cheat would be perfect for Apex Legends

Cheats are running rampant across the battle royale genre right now. The problem has plagued Apex Legends, Warzone, and more. With the problem only seeming to get worse, fans are contributing their ideas on how to fix their favorite games and make it a fair playing field across the board. 

Apex Legends is no stranger to the world of cheating. The game has seen its fair share of aimbots, wallhacks, and other types of exploits over the last ten seasons. It’s affecting both casual and ranked games and is basically inescapable.

While it may not be an every game occurrence, it’s frustrating enough to experience once or twice, let alone several times a week. The problem has become so bad that even Nickmercs has chimed in on the ongoing cheating problem in Apex.

The most recent string of hacks has players desperate to find an answer for this problem, and one Reddit user has come up with a sensible solution.

Apex Legends anti-cheat solution

Vanguard is Riot Games’ signature anti-cheat program. As a companion to Valorant, Vanguard has the ability to automatically detect cheaters and shut them down.

This allows the game to end with no one other than the cheater taking a penalty of any kind.

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While Vanguard has worked perfectly with Valorant, the battle royale genre has more to consider than the tactical shooter does. The odds of finding a cheater in a ten-person lobby like in Valorant are pretty low. This changes drastically for Apex Legends, which pits sixty players into the same arena.

The chance of a hacker invading a game goes up exponentially, meaning that an auto-cancel would kill a higher number of games, and fifty-nine innocent players would be reset for being in the same lobby with one cheater.

This problem only continues to get worse when considering how ranked points work in each game. In Valorant, your rank isn’t adjusted until the end of the game and is mostly based on if you win or lose. Apex is a different story. A player could have a hot start to a game, only to lose it all when the game detects a cheater in the lobby.

An in-game cheat prevention system is definitely a good start to ending hacking in the game, but getting that system right is crucial.

How would an anti-cheat system work in Apex Legends

It may be sensible for a Vanguard-like system to be implemented, but with some measured changes to how it works. The standard auto-cancellation could work for a game type like Arenas, but it clearly isn’t the right choice for the BR as a whole.

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Apex kind of has a live anti-cheat in its highest-ranked lobbies, with Respawn developer Hideouts often on the lookout for cheaters being caught on livestream. In these situations, the cheater is disconnected from the game, but the damage they caused isn’t reversed. If Respawn could improve upon this idea and include retroactive loss forgiveness for any RP that is lost in a game, that might be enough to start righting the ship.

The key idea here is not just to punish the person who is cheating, but to protect those who are not. The auto-cancel option simply wouldn’t work, as a hacker could essentially torment an entire server just by repeatedly connecting to games with the intention of getting them canceled.

While it may be a while before we see any official measure get taken against hackers, this system could hold the key to making the Outlands a safer place for its competitors.