Wondering whether Apex Legends has undergone a ban wave in 2022? Well, there have been three ban waves since January 2022. One entirely affected high-ranked console players while the latest one viciously cleaned both PC and console servers of cheaters. Being a popular FPS, Apex Legends’ battlegrounds reeks strongly of abusers using aimbots, x-ray visions, speed boosts, exploits, and more. Respawn’s creations like Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends have also been victims of a number of DDoS attacks in the past. Both EA and Respawn struggled for days to meet players’ demands to reinstate the servers. To tackle such large-scale security issues and abusers trying to destroy the battlegrounds’ fair play policy is hard. However, Respawn has managed to emerge victorious for now. In this article, we will be talking about Apex Legend’s 2022 ban waves and more.
The first Apex Legends ban wave of the year happened in January
As per reports, Respawn managed to ban over 560 console players, who were happily exploiting a 6-man arena bug. As you may already know, Apex Legends is based on an MMR points system, where winning matches against high-ranked players will get you a large number of AP, and losing such a match will cost you less. On the other hand, if you are matched against lower-ranked players, winning the match will get you less AP but losing the match will cost you a lot of points. In another scenario, when you reach the highest ranks or max out on the MMR system, you gain a mere number of points (12) every time you win. This led to predators looking for an “alternative” and they did manage to discover one.
So, as per reports, Apex Arena hosted a bug that allowed predators to rank up faster. As it happens, if a high-ranked player won a match with fair means, it would lead to an increase of 12 points. This increase in points remained constant for all matches. However, predators found that losing a match led to losing some points but winning the next match got them a hike of around 48 points! As players started discovering this exploit, they exploited it to their heart’s content until Respawn found out. According to reports, this exploit was only possible on Xbox and Playstation, which led to Respawn punishing only console users during the January Ban Wave.
https://twitter.com/RSPN_Hideouts/status/1486098689877704705
The second and third ban waves of this year happened in February
According to Respawn’s security analyst, Conor Ford (also known as Hideouts), Apex Legends went through another bout of cleaning on February 2, 2021. The second wave affected a small number of players (71 in total). But, Hideouts boasted of having “purged” the leaderboards of all cheaters- both PC and consoles.
https://twitter.com/RSPN_Hideouts/status/1488686801661272066
The third and the latest ban wave (February 8, 2022) reportedly suspended another 600+ players (PC and consoles). 388 players were suspended for trying to exploit a bug that let them play in lower-ranked matches while being high-ranked players. This bug also allowed non-Switch players to join Switch lobbies. Another 230 players were temporarily thrown off the servers for conspiring to trade kills in ranked matches to earn more points.
https://twitter.com/RSPN_Hideouts/status/1490835584599789570
Hideouts also added that Apex Legends’ leaderboards are now free of any cheaters and exploiters for the time being. It’s obvious that Respawn is planning to incorporate more ban waves in the coming days. There should be no place for cheaters in the gaming community, and Respawn is proudly making sure of that!
