Apex Legends professional player Chris “sweetdreams” called on developer Respawn Entertainment to take action against cheating that has harmed the game’s competitive community.
The NRG pro shared a TwitLonger last night, exclaiming “#SaveApexRanked before it’s too late.” The TwitLonger explained that it’s been about nine months of excessive cheating, disrupting the integrity of the competitive ladder. But it hasn’t only been top players who are impacted by the cheating. sweetdreams said that streamers can’t make good content and most players have had the quality of their games declined.
“The game has spiraled out of control to the poitn where the term ‘unplayable’ has neverh ad more validity,” sweetdreams said.
Empty Promises and False Hope. #SaveApexRanked before it’s too late.
Read: https://t.co/ruTdiQ7FGN
— sweet (@sweetdreamsh1) June 28, 2021
Apex Legends ranked affected by cheating
sweetdreams wrote in the TwitLonger about how the cheating issue started. He theorized that it really began six months ago when players from servers in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore joined North American servers to avoid rampant cheating on their own servers. But sweetdreams said that many cheaters followed them, hoping for faster queue times. From there, the cheating has continued to grow rapidly.
“Myself and almost every NA/EU streamer or public competitive figure have come together because we literally can’t see the game spiral further out of control,” sweetdreams said. “Ranked is the backbone of Apex and we can’t take it much longer. We have been offered empty promises of focus on the issue which from a results standpoint have been complete lies.”
sweetdreams said that the lack of changes have been “demoralizing” and he no longer knows what can be done on the players’ end. He called on the Apex Legends community to get #SaveApexRanked trending as a final attempt to get Respawn to take action.
Respawn Entertainment responds to #SaveApexRanked
Apex Legends players, including pros and casual fans alike, started to share #SaveApexRanked, ultimately getting it to trend worldwide on Twitter. The intense response to sweetdreams’ TwitLonger prompted a response from Respawn Entertainment.
The tweet stated that developers are pursuing several options to “crackdown on cheating,” including hiring more people to focus on manual bans, developing tools that automatically detect and stop DDOS attacks, and investing ways to catch and remove cheaters from the game even faster.
The Respawn team is pursuing several options to crack down on cheating in @playapex:
⚒️ Hiring more people to focus on manual bans
???? Developing more tools to automatically detect and stop DDOS attacks
???? Investigating ways to more quickly catch and remove cheaters from games— Respawn (@Respawn) June 28, 2021
“Playing against cheaters sucks. We’ll keep you updated as we ship the above changes and pursue new ones,” Respawn tweeted.
The tweet got some applause from the Apex Legends community. Some asked to be a part of the banning task force. Others cheered Respawn on from the sidelines. But for other players, this wasn’t enough just yet. sweetdreams and others want to see Respawn take action before they are satisfied that change is truly coming this time around.
