Bug or nerf? Apex Legends players melt down as tap strafing suddenly changes

While it hasn’t been a topic of great discussion lately, tap strafing was once one of the hottest issues debated in the Apex Legends community.

The movement tech was reportedly going to be removed from the game several seasons ago after plenty of disagreements between players and developers, but the change didn’t end up coming to the game—until today. Sort of.

Several players, like NRG’s Chris “sweetdreams” Sexton, discovered that after tap strafing seemed to have disappeared from the game, their ability to pull off the movement tech would randomly come back or partially return. Many other players reported they could only turn 90 degrees while tap strafing, as opposed to the 180-degree hairpin turns players used to be able to accomplish with the technique.

Regardless, it looks like players are still having issues with tap strafing, and they’re not happy about it.

No word has come from Respawn or the Apex devs on a change coming to the game, and the seemingly random nature of this change seems to mean it’s most likely a bug. No developer would intentionally change a movement mechanic for it to randomly work for players in certain games, while other players can’t access it at all.

Still, given the past comments made by several developers regarding tap strafing, the sudden and unannounced change has many players suspicious that tap strafing has been intentionally removed from Apex. The balancing team has frequently referenced the inaccessibility of tap strafing (it can only be accomplished on controller through third-party Steam software), as well as how difficult it was for players to understand what was happening in a fight when tap strafing was combined with movement abilities, making the technique not very fair in their eyes.

It’s unclear at this point whether tap strafing is actually gone, or if it will come back fully at any point. All that’s left is to wait for someone from Respawn to actually address it.

Update Aug. 15 3:18pm CT: Respawn officially addressed the tap strafing issue, and it seems to confirm that the change was not an intentional one, saying it would “sort this one out.”