Dishonest is an ongoing downside in Apex Legends and one that–from the skin wanting in–feels like a difficulty that is gone unaddressed for dozens of seasons now. It is a tough state of affairs for the Apex Legends workforce. On one hand, if the workforce tells gamers the way it’s actively eliminating dishonest gamers or bots, then the workforce exhibits its hand and subsequently makes all of Apex Legends’ safeguards that a lot simpler to get round. However on the opposite, saying nothing makes it look like the workforce is actively ignoring participant considerations. For some time now, the Apex Legends workforce has opted for the second strategy, seemingly believing it the higher of two imperfect methods. Going ahead, nevertheless, the workforce goes to attempt to thread the needle between each methods.
Forward of the discharge of a weblog put up that goes into how the Apex Legends workforce has contended with cheaters prior to now and breaks down the anti-cheat takeaways for this previous June and July, Digital Arts head of product and studio built-in communications Tracey Thompson spoke to me in regards to the philosophy behind this transformation in technique.
“EA Leisure is form of wanting on the panorama of the place we’re,” Thompson advised me. “And clearly as , there may be the narrative round cheaters in Apex and being afraid to play the sport signifies that it is a very acute downside that is ongoing and is not essentially essentially the most simple to sort out.”
Most of all, Thompson continued, EA and Respawn hope that gamers see that the workforce behind Apex Legends already is aware of there’s been a scarcity of transparency in the case of the applied anti-cheat methods in Apex Legends. That sentiment was “an necessary half” of placing collectively the weblog. In the weblog itself, the Apex Legends workforce notes that greater than six million accounts have been banned since Apex Legends’ launch in February 2019, with just a little over 100,000 accounts banned every month on common. In June and July 2024, these bans have been overwhelmingly everlasting and most have been imposed for dishonest versus bots.
“We all know that we have to inform you extra,” Thompson added. “We wish to actually kick issues off with sharing what we’ve been doing after which realizing that it must be extra… [We acknowledge] that this is probably not as meaty as individuals would really like, however I do suppose that in sharing this with you…[it sets] an expectation with [players] that we all know that there is far more that we’ve to do.”
Whereas speaking with Thompson, she reiterated that this weblog put up is merely the “first of many” to return and that followers should not be fearful that this one put up might be Apex Legends’ one-and-done response. “Over time, we will really begin to open the aperture to present individuals increasingly with out really freely giving the secrets and techniques that individuals might then circumvent,” she stated.
In a follow-up e-mail to the PR workforce, I requested if Respawn had an thought in regards to the cadence of gamers getting updates like this weblog put up. Would gamers hear extra throughout seasonal updates? Annually throughout the annual birthday celebration? Each different month?
In response, the Apex Legends workforce emailed the next assertion: “We wish every of those updates to be significant so that can information us on the cadence. Nonetheless, we cannot all the time look ahead to a weblog. If we wish to share one thing within the second that we really feel is a win or a smaller replace, we’ll try this by means of social [media], group platforms, and so forth.”
As somebody who performs Apex Legends pretty frequently and has been masking each season for GameSpot since Season 3, I am curious to see the dev workforce’s follow-up to this preliminary weblog. From day one, the Apex Legends workforce has firmly remained within the “We do not actually speak about it” camp when it got here to its anti-cheating methods. And this was to, once more, keep away from cheaters studying what to avoid. It feels just a little unusual to see the workforce shift the pendulum within the different route in spite of everything this time, even when it is solely to intention for a center floor. What can the workforce share that was too troublesome to share earlier than? However like something in the case of a live-service sport, we’ll simply have to attend and see.
Apex Legends Season 22 is in full swing. The brand new season added a brand new cyberpunk-themed map and the flexibility to dual-wield two of the sport’s 4 sidearms. It additionally incorporates a brand-new battle go, which modified forward of the launch of Season 22 following public outcry.